A Man of Principle
by Thescarredman
Summary: You know how sometimes you look at something familiar, but from a different angle, and you realize you don't know it at all? Badger is like that.
1. The Making of the Man

Bertram Eaton sighed inwardly as he entered his office to begin his workday. There were days he jumped out of bed to face the morning. This wasn't one of those days. _Sometimes, I feel like I'm just the sad little king of a sad little hill._

"Mornin, Badger." Buster's bald scalp was already shining with sweat in the morning sun filtering through the skylight past the shades. The big man held Bertram's 'business suit,' jacket in one hand, sweat-stained derby and wrinkled tie in the other. The sight of the big mook playing butler broke his bad mood. The tatty ensemble had been something the boys had found in a second-hand shop and presented to him as a gift, saying in all seriousness that a man of business needed a proper kit. He'd hadn't the heart to refuse, and had felt ridiculous in it at first, but the way his boys had swelled with pride to see him wearing it on business had changed his mind, and it had become a trademark of sorts. It was also a way of poking fun at their more affluent clients, dandies who'd look right through you anywhere but Eavesdown; it tickled his people to see those peacocks coming for favors to their Badger in his secondhand coat. _You want to keep good people,_ he thought, _you have to let them know their worth to you._ He slipped the knotted tie on over his tee shirt, adjusting it loosely around his neck, then slipped the jacket on. Buster set the hat on his head and watched him critically as he cocked it back. "Natty."

"Right, then." Badger settled into his rather dusty leather office chair and began looking over reports. "What's on for this morning?"

Ho, his appointments secretary, was seated on the couch nearby. He crossed his legs and consulted his pad. "Hoya's on his way. Routine collection, but you know how they are. He'll want the money from your hand, no one else's."

He nodded. Persephone was a world that styled itself an outpost of Core civilization in the hinterland of the Outer Worlds, but it wasn't all urban bustle and high society. Eavesdown Dock was a freewheeling enclave of opportunists, scrabblers, and generally rude characters scratching a living at the boundary zone between Core and Rim, and between avaricious affluence and simple desperation. It was the only port on Persephone where ships not operating under license from the Transport Board (that is, ships not owned by some large Central World corporation) were allowed to land, and the rest of the planet tried its best to ignore the place. It had its own makeshift unofficial government, a council of sorts that settled grievances and kept everyone's dealings out of sight of the planet's real officials, who were content to let Eavesdown keep its own shabby house as long as none of its problems spilled beyond its borders into the pristine communities surrounding. Its economy ran on cash and barter and favors exchanged, a minimum of credit, and damned few electronic transfers of the sort the Core found so useful for keeping track of its citizens. And the public peace was kept, not by officers of the law, who were given no respect here, but by uniformed gangs, usually Chinese, who collected 'fees' from local businessmen. Hoya was the Chairman of the Eavesdown Protective Society, the port's de facto chief of police. That such a man came personally to Badger for his contribution was a sign of high status. "All right. What else?"

"_Brutus_ landed yesterday. Duffey says they're headed for the outer ring and looking for cargo."

Badger cocked an eye at Kenji, his portly accountant, sitting in his little alcove surrounded by bookwork. "Well, we got a few items sort of fell off a truck uptown. If that's not enough to fill his hold, what else we got?"

Kenji looked up from his antique typer. "Warehouse on Progress Street has a lot of machine tools, including some interdicted ones. Those usually go over big with the prairie dogs."

"Well, then. I'm sure we can make a deal. Have him come to call, first opening."

"Shiia. And… we got word from _Serenity._" Ho's tone said it all. _Serenity's _captain set all his people's teeth on edge. Badger didn't care much for the man either, but he'd been handy at the time, and even stick-up-the-arse Browncoats had to eat, he supposed. Badger had needed a capable crew for a fast trip to a blown-out ship that was floating free and unwatched not too far away. He'd arranged that not all the derelict's cargo be removed by the owner's salvage teams, and what was left would fetch a tidy sum, at least a thousand platinum split sixty-forty with the crew he sent out to fetch it.

"And?"

"Say they've got the goods and they're headed in. Must be three-four hours out. But…" He gestured towards Badger's desk.

Badger picked up the news flimsy then, a thin sheet of material formatted with columns of text and boxes for capture imagery, updated thrice daily. Most of the information it contained was feihua, directives about this and that that Eavesdown ignored with impunity. But this issue, hot off the Cortex, contained a bulletin about a Firefly that had been interrupted salvaging a derelict ship nearby, instructing all upright citizens to report and contribute, tsai bu shir. Ordinarily, such a scavenger would surrender, be boarded for an assessment of the illegal salvage, pay a hefty fine and get sent on its way. Clearly that hadn't happened, and the strident tone of the Navy officer reporting the crime made clear the Firefly's escape had been accomplished in a way that had made fools of the Alliance Navy – not an incident they'd likely forget soon.

He clenched his teeth as he read. The cargo was imprinted, of course; he'd expected that, though he hadn't mentioned it to his Browncoat errand-boy. Not important, as long as the Alliance wasn't looking for stolen cargo; under present circumstances, however, he'd have to offer it at a discount, maybe a third off. And he'd still have to pay the man who'd left the goods off the salvage manifest and sealed them up; things hadn't gone wrong at _his_ end. Badger was determined that the drop in the venture's net be shared by that arrogant shagua in the brown coat. Still, he and Reynolds would see a good profit for the job, if the man would see reason about the cut in his payment. He relaxed. "All right. We'll deal with that when they get here. What else?"

Buster, not Ho, spoke. "Darcy's here," he said, embarrassed.

Badger felt his ill mood return fivefold. "What does she want, then? Same old?"

"I suppose."

"Tell her I'm busy."

"Did. Says she'll wait. She was camped at the front door, blocking traffic and making a scene. I put her in the storeroom."

Badger took a deep breath and let it out, forcing calm. "Let her cool heels till I've got the time, then."

_Not a good start to the day_, he decided.

Hoya was a trim-looking Chinaman with short black hair and a goatee, just beginning middle age. Badger greeted him at the door with a bow for all passersby to see. "Greetings and welcome," he said in fluent Mandarin. "You grace my humble place of business, honored sir."

The man made a small dismissive gesture. "You make too much of a visit from an old friend, Eaton." But Hoya was obviously pleased by the public show, which maintained his status among those he served as well as those he thwarted. He entered, leaving his guards outside, a sign of trust and respect.

Badger conducted him to the lounge at the rear of his warehouse, soft comfortable chairs facing each other across a low table, still speaking in Mandarin. "Will you take refreshment? Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?"

"Coffee, if it's no trouble." Hoya always took coffee, and a pot of fresh brew was always waiting when he arrived.

The police chief sipped his beverage. "Eaton, there are only four places in the 'Verse where coffee is grown, and I've sampled every variety. I say most sincerely that the best I've ever had is always under your roof. Have you discovered another location, perhaps?"

Badger smiled over his cup. "I'm told that there is a certain art to coffee's preparation, involving many considerations – roasting, grinding, the temperature and purity of the water, several others. I know little of it. My man Mokey sees to my needs in that regard." He nodded towards the large black man in dreadlocks who stood guard at the door, assault rifle in hand. Hearing his name mentioned and seeing Badger's eyes on him, he gave his boss a brief smile.

"He doesn't speak Mandarin," Hoya observed.

"He curses in it quite fluently."

"You speak it very well indeed." Hoya smiled behind his cup. "Better, I'm told, than your English."

"Ah. Well. They say you can never fully shake off what you learn as a child. I was born and raised on Dyton Colony – excuse me, Titan to those not raised there – and the accent has stayed with me, even though I haven't been back in years. Mandarin, on the other hand, I learned as a young man starting out in business."

The man gave Badger a very direct look. "And business is good?"

"Business is very good, thanks to your protection." He raised his hand, palm up, and Buster placed a shoe-sized wooden box in it. He extended it to Hoya with both hands. "Please accept this as a contribution to help you continue your good works."

Hoya chuckled as he took the box from Badger's hands and set it on the table. "You have style, Eaton. Most of your associates simply pass me an envelope, and draw back their hands as if I might bite."

"Then most of my associates have a poor sense of the costs of doing business, and no notion of the value of your service. I know just how quickly my warehouses would be emptied without your vigilance, and how many more men I would have to hire to guard them. And business is better conducted in an environment where… untrustworthy behavior is actively discouraged."

The man was holding his stomach now, shaking with mirth. "Please, stop! I'm not a temple warrior, I'm just a flatfoot with a freer hand than most. But I do believe you value what we do. It's why we allow you so many men under arms."

Badger ducked his head. "I find that a show of overwhelming force in difficult situations often prevents unpleasantness."

"As do I." He held out his cup, and Buster refilled it. "You're a strange one, Eaton. No offense."

"None taken."

"And your place of business truly is humble." Hoya looked at the mismatched furniture, industrial shelving, the tarps providing shade and privacy under the plastic construction dome that roofed Badger's offices. "There are men on the Docks making half what you do, and living twice as well."

"It's bad for business to appear too prosperous, my friend. People will begin thinking your cut is too large, that they're being cheated. This place is more than adequate to the conduct of my business. I have a comfortable house not far away."

Hoya looked down into his cup. "Yet you have a taste for expensive luxuries, like real coffee and red meat." He nodded towards the mechanical apple peeler on Badger's desk and the apple inserted in it. "And fresh produce."

Badger's fondness for fresh fruit, especially apples, was part of his business persona, like his coat and hat. He always had some on hand about his office, and could be seen noshing on them all day as he worked. It was an uncharacteristic show of wealth, but he reckoned the little affectation did his reputation no harm. Few people knew the reason behind it. Apples had a special significance to Badger. An apple had once put him in prison and set his feet on the path leading to his present career.

He'd been a typical sixteen-year-old on Dyton, a street kid with few possessions and little education and way too much time on his hands. He'd tasted fresh fruit nine times his whole life, Christmas gifts from his mother and purchased dear. Egged on by his friends, he'd tried to pinch an apple from a local greengrocer and been caught two steps from the display. The proprietor had gripped Bertie's wrist in his big fist, cuffed him about without marking him, and given him a dressing down the like of which the fatherless boy had never had. Bertie had shivered in fear and wonder and promised never to steal again.

At that moment, a constable had stepped in for his daily graft, taken one look at the grocer holding onto the boy with the apple still in his hand, and taken him into custody. The grocer had protested, saying the boy had learned his lesson and he didn't want to press charges.

The copper had scoffed. "He'd tell you anything to get out the front door. And be back in here tomorrow, likely. You're a gullible man, Morrison."

In a holding pen with a dozen other ne'er-do-wells, Bertie had learned that the local judge had ordered a crackdown on street crime in his district, it being election week, and the court docket was packed. And the judge was eager to show the voters his tough stance on crime.

Bertie'd been brought into the courtroom two days later. One glance around the defendants' box had told him that the 'crackdown' was doubly a sham: it had been packed with small-timers and nobodies like him, not a thug or bullyboy or professional burglar in sight. No one's payoff money was being jeopardized by the inconvenient arrest of a 'fish,' a crook who shared his take with the police in return for a free hand. The coppers had brought the judge only bums, jaywalkers and bread-stealers. Oblivious or uncaring, the stern-looking man in the black robes had sent hapless transgressors to lockup in lieu of steep fines they couldn't pay.

Bertie's name had been called. He'd listened to the charges, which had made him sound like a career criminal who'd tried to stick up the store, and had been asked for his plea. Fatalistically, he'd pled guilty, and begun to explain what had happened, hoping against hope for a little mercy from the court. The judge had let him talk for less than ten seconds before he'd banged his gavel. "Enough."

Badger would never forget the look of cool contempt on the judge's face, looking down on him and all the other defendants from his ornate and lofty perch. "The Court has better uses for its time than listening to some lying little weasel trying to win its sympathy. Age is no mitigating circumstance; the defendant obviously feels no remorse and is already well on his way to establishing an illicit career. Society would best be served by delaying the progress of that career as long as possible. Maximum sentence, two years." The gavel had banged again, and he'd been led off. Bertram's resolve to stay right with the law had disappeared with his last look at the judge's face.

Prison was less a reformatory than a finishing school for career criminals. To survive, he'd blended in and played the game, and discovered a talent for it. In prison, he'd heard an inmate say, "Stick ten men naked in the same cell with one credit each for three hours, and when you come back, one cobber will have most of the money." Bertram was determined to be that cobber. He'd traded favors, then goods, and eventually begun making loans at interest. He'd dealt with the prison gangs without becoming entangled with them, established a small group of his own, and become something of a voice among the inmate population. He'd left prison behind forever at eighteen with a number of contacts and job opportunities.

One of those offers had been offworld, on Persephone, working for Howard, an 'arranger' at Eavesdown Docks. The idea of showing his heels to Dyton had been irresistible. Howard, a friend of a friend, had been impressed with him early and had given him plenty of opportunity to learn and prove himself. He'd earned a reputation as a tough little bugger who always came through for his clients, and always came out on top in a pissing contest. Remembering that stick-up-the-arse judge's estimation, he took the nickname of Badger, a sort of weasel that was more likely to steal a bigger animal's food than hunt his own. He'd soon outgrown his patron, and Howard had come to work for him instead, making more money than ever. He'd sent for his family as soon as he was set, setting his Mum up in a better house than she'd ever seen, and his younger brother in a good school far from the Docks.

Flush with his first string of successes at Eavesdown, he'd ordered a crate of apples from a certain store on Dyton, paying more for shipping than for the goods. The container had arrived with the purchase price in an envelope tucked in with the fruit. From then on, Badger had a standing order for the best apples at wholesale plus shipping. They still cost more than buying local, but there was a principle involved, and Morrison deserved an assurance that there were no hard feelings. Badger steered business the man's way when he could.

Badger had learned some important lessons in stir. One was that a man's strength lay in his connections: to recognize your friends and cultivate them, increasing their value as you strengthened the bonds between. Another was the importance of respect between associates who did business without the protection of legal instruments.

Badger smiled at Hoya, a friend of sorts and a man who made business at Eavesdown possible and profitable. "What's the use of making money if you can't buy a few nice things to share with friends?"

"Your generosity is hinted at in certain circles. You'd be a far richer man if you weren't such a soft touch. I know how many old friends and their relatives are on your payroll."

"Trustworthy and talented people are hard to find. It's why I haven't expanded my operation in recent years."

"They're not so hard to find, if you look for them on the auction block instead of waiting to happen across them. Buying your retainers would lower your operating costs, as well."

Badger drew in, grew cautious. He knew full well that all Hoya's household staff were slaves. "I once wore chains, old friend. It colors my perceptions. I don't think I could deal fairly with such servants."

But the police chief huffed and leaned back, smiling. "You can be sure my servants' collars sit lightly on their necks, Eaton. Especially the women's. Sometimes I wonder who's bonded to whom." He sat forward and rose, scooping up the box. "I must leave now. Thank you for your hospitality, and your support. If I can be of help to you in any way, don't hesitate to call."

"Likewise, my friend." As Badger walked Hoya to the door, he said, "I have a question. For almost as long as I've known you, you've called me Eaton, the only person I know who does so. After so long as friends, why do you still address me by my last name?"

Hoya paused at the door, eyebrows raised. "I thought it was your first."

Buster followed him back down the passage. "Darcy's still waiting."

Badger settled in behind his desk. "How long till _Serenity_ docks?"

"She just called for approach clearance. Fast as her pilot drops 'er to the dirt, thirty minutes, no more."

Dealing with Darcy would likely be unpleasant, but it needn't take long. The arrival of Reynolds and his bunch would put a limit to the amount of his time she wasted. He picked up a report and pretended to study it. "Send her in, then."

When Buster and Howard brought her into the office, he nearly forgot to study the flimsy in his hands, so shocked was he at her appearance. In the three months since he'd seen her last, she'd packed on fifty pounds and aged ten years. Knowing the sort she was running with lately, he'd expected her to have let herself go. But looking at her now, it was very hard to see the Companion-class beauty he'd met on his brother's arm seven years before. She'd lopped her waist-length hair, once her best feature, and had traded in her trendy duds for a drab shift. He guessed the clothes had gone to a local pawnshop, and the hair to a wigmaker's. _Just goes to show,_ he thought, _none of us is more than a step from the cliff's edge._

She advanced to the desk and stopped. "Hello, Bertram. You're looking well."

_She might have lost everything else, but she's still got her manners._ "Hullo, Darcy. You look like bloody hell. What do you want?"

She clasped her hands, trying to maintain her poise. "I need a loan. For medical bills. I don't have any money for doctors, and they won't extend me credit."

Badger dropped his eyes back to his paperwork. "Too right. Who in their right mind would let _you_ run a tab? I paid your debts twice already since Bernie went in. Don't ask."

Her clasped hands trembled. "I know I've been irresponsible and, and, unappreciative. Taken up with a bad crowd. But it's been so hard with him gone. I've been all alone, and you weren't around after the trial…"

"I wasn't around much between the wedding and the indictment, either, Darcy. Never even saw the inside of that fancy house before you lost it. You didn't want your friends to see where your husband came from. And you surely didn't want to risk smudging your fine clothes rubbing up against Eavesdown riffraff. Least, till the money ran out." Badger forbore to say that it had been his money that had provided the education that had been his brother's ticket out of the Docks. A chance that Bernard had squandered by living beyond his means after graduation and his entry into 'legitimate' business, trying to keep up with his friends and hang onto his high-bred wife. Badger was sure the woman standing on the other side of his desk was the reason his brother had raided his clients' accounts. "Where's your old friends now you need help? Or your new ones, that matter?"

Darcy's hands were white from the tightness of her grip. "I'm done with all that. I've changed, Bertram, I really have. I'm off drops, have been since you saw me last. But I'm sick now, and I…"

Badger considered the extent of his obligation. His brother was halfway through a six-year sentence. Early on, Bernard had asked his brother to look after his wife till he got out, and brother Bertram had reluctantly promised. Badger made full use of his monthly visitation allowance, but Darcy had only seen her husband twice in three years, always with legal papers to sign. Darcy was a touchy and seldom-discussed topic during visits, but Badger had a feeling Bernie was out of love. But he hadn't released Badger from his promise. "How much do you owe them, Darcy?"

"What? I-"

"Don't try to play games with me. You can't get credit anywhere because you owe everybody. You're up to your eyebrows with the sharks, and they're circling, or I miss my guess. How much?"

In a small voice, she said, "Six thousand."

The room stirred. Badger stood. "Six thousand. That's more than you'd fetch on the gorram block, Darcy." He looked her up and down elaborately. "Maybe not three years ago, but your days as a trophy wife are over. And you've got no other skills. I'd be surprised if you know which end of a mop to hold. Thought of selling an organ or two? Before the people you owe take them for their payment?"

"Just a loan." Her voice rose. "Till I'm well again. Then I'll find work somewhere and pay you back."

"You won't find a job," he said, as if instructing a child. "You won't pay back any loans." He slowly stepped behind her as she stood squirming. He stood at her back for a few moments, pretending to study her shabby clothes until he spotted the characteristic itch reflex he was looking for. It pushed him into a decision. _God knows what Hoya will think when he hears. But it's the only way. _"Three years indenture. Take it or leave it."

She stiffened, some of the old haughtiness returning. "You can't mean that."

"You expecting a better offer today? A lifetime contract wouldn't pay me back for what I've already spent on you, little girl. But I don't want you around any longer than it takes my brother to get out of stir and take you off my hands." _Assuming he'll still want you after a good look, which I much doubt._

His sister-in-law's lower lip trembled. "You bastard."

_Too right. A stupid one. But you'll be dead in a week if I don't pay your debts, or dead in a month if I do._ "And when the contract's signed, you'll keep a civil tongue in your head in reference to your master, or it's lashes for you. And to my mother, who'll be giving you your orders."

Badger's mother lived with him in a largish house just outside the Docks. Mum refused the hired housekeeper he'd offered, and kept the place herself. But she'd never thought much of her youngest son's snooty uptown wife, and might enjoy making a competent domestic of her. Three years of Mum's tutoring would enable him to find Darcy a job, at least – maybe scrubbing floors for one of her old society friends – and would be fitting revenge for years of the woman's snubs and slights.

Darcy stood motionless. In a still, small voice she said, "Please don't do this."

"Don't do what? Save your life? Or rub your nose in it? I know full well what sort of people you're into for six grand. You're not off the drops, Darcy. But you will be."

"No. _No._ I'm clean."

"Well, we'll see in a couple days, won't we? So what's it to be? Three years indenture, or turned into spare parts by next morning, is my guess."

She closed her eyes, and her lower lip trembled. Tears leaked from under her lids. "Yes."

He dismissed her show of misery as pure self-pity. "Right, then. Go to wherever you're staying and pick up your things. George and Yuki will go with. Only take what you can carry alone. They're not your pack mules." He turned to Howard. "I don't care what she leaves behind, but tell them to go through the kit she picks out, every bit of it. If they find drops or anything like, they're to leave her there." He turned back to Darcy, who was wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "They'll take you to my house, and my mother will see to you. I'll have the papers drawn up and I'll bring them home tonight to sign." _And if Mum says the word, the deal is off and you'll be on the street instead, so you'd better be on your best behavior with her today._

_Why am I doing this? I don't owe her a thing. She's been nothing but trouble for this family since she married in. I could leave her to swing, and three years from now Bernie'd thank me for it._

_But, for a little while, when he first met her, I thought she might be the best thing ever happened to him. And she could have been, if she'd showed him a little more love and a lot less pride._

_Pride has been the undoing of better than her._

She turned away, shocky but composed.

"Wait," he said, suddenly uncertain. "Let me see your teeth." Buster and Howard stood by, ready to hold her fast. Badger squeezed her cheeks, exposing her teeth. They showed the faint mother-of-pearl iridescence of heavy drop usage. "Yes," he hissed, and sent her on her way.

He turned to see Reynolds and his usual shore party waiting behind Mokey's outstretched rifle. He nodded, and the guard raised the weapon, allowing the three to enter.

Badger said to Reynolds, "You're late," intending to add, _if you were trying to beat the news._

"You're lyin."

Badger's vision shrank to a tunnel ending at the tramp captain's face. He saw no hint of friendliness, not even grudging respect. Clear as day, Malcolm Reynolds saw Badger as something to be got around or used, nothing more. The captain was a head taller, and suddenly looked very much like another man who'd looked down on him from a high place without really seeing him. "_What_ did you just say to me?"

*

"Wheel just keeps turning, Badger," Reynolds said as he and his departed under the guns of a dozen men.

Badger smiled at the futile threat. "That only matters to the people on the rim," he answered, thinking it sounded very Hindu. After they disappeared, he looked about at his crew, proud of their quick reaction when he'd made his move. His eye fastened on Kenji. "You got bullets in that thing?"

"Don't know," the bookkeeper said, returning the piece to its drawer. "Hope not. I might have shot somebody. By accident, I mean."

"When did _you_ start packing?"

When you started dealing with that bunch. They make me nervous. They don't pay attention to the rules, you know? You done the right thing, sendin em packing without a deal."

"Oh, he'll be back. Once he asks around and sees his chances of unloading that cargo without getting shot for payment." Badger returned to his desk and finished peeling his apple. "Hat in hand."

Howard watched him with troubled eyes. "You wouldn't sell them to the Feds."

"What d'ye take me for? Half the people we deal with got prices on their heads. I start selling them out, we're done around here." Badger felt the muscles under his ears jump. "But _he_ thinks I would. He thinks I'd sell me mother. That's why he was ready to cheat us. He wouldn't have tried that on one of his old Army chums, even a hwundan who'd steal his clean socks. But his conscience doesn't extend to the likes of us."

"The big one looks like trouble," Mokey said. "He might come back. Maybe we should deal with him first."

Badger waved a hand dismissively. "He's a big dog on a short leash. He can growl all he wants. Reynolds will keep him in hand. And they'll be back in three hours to deal, or I miss my guess."

*

"Badger." Buster pushed into the office. "_Serenity's-_"

"I got eyes." The office brightened and the walls shivered as the tramp freighter passed a hundred meters overhead. Badger watched the twin stars of its drive pods dwindle as it rose towards the Black. "Guess he's gone to try his luck elsewhere, the crazy barstid." He made a show of interest in the manifest he and Duffey were going over. "Pride has been the undoing of better than him."

19


	2. The Women in His Life

Badger lifted his face to the morning sunshine as he walked the crowded, narrow street. He took a deep breath, and his nose filled with a rich and heady mix: the smells of dust, cooking, incense, body odor, drive exhaust, a dozen others. The clamor of the vendors and customers sounded over the deep rumble of ships coming and going at the landing area. _My place. My people,_ he thought contentedly. The nods and small bows of many whose paths he crossed reinforced his feeling that all was right with the world.

Pissing off Warrick Harrow always left Badger in a good mood.

_"'A petty thief with delusions of standing," am I?_ He almost laughed out loud. _A fine insult, coming from a man who just bought himself a lordship. With money he got from smuggling banned entertainment vids, no less._

Mokey's mood was somewhat less cheerful. "Swear, I don't know why you deal with that touchy peacock. If he didn't want you to tell him what you thought of his stupid sash, he shouldn't of brought it to the meet."

"Prolly sleeps in it, mate," Badger said with undiminished humor. "He's just a broken-tailed alleycat who claims he's a lion on his mother's side. He's got his pedigree, a down-at-the-heels estate, two good suits, and a herd of cows. He still gets invites to all the fancy parties because his family's gentry for six generations, but none of the old money wants to be seen talking to him. He uses the get-togethers to meet new-rich social climbers. They're the only sort he can impress. Sometimes he gets a little business out of it." He smiled wider. "Wasn't really laughing cause he was wearing one, even at the Docks. It's just the bloody thing is red as a landing beacon and twice as wide as anybody else's, like he wants it visible from orbit. Pathetic."

"So, what about the deal?" Howard said from behind him. "That off, I suppose?"

"Don't know. Haven't decided." _Don't know anybody I dislike enough to give the job of shipping His Lordship's cargo._ "Harrow still wants the deal, that's sure. He knows he'll never pull it off by himself."

"Huh?" Buster's eyebrows pushed together. "He called the office and said he never wants to hear from you again."

"Buster," Badger said patiently, "he called four times in four hours and said he never wants to hear from me again. Which means he's desperate to hear from _somebody_, so long as it's not me."

Warrick Harrow was a man whose fortunes were uncertain. Most of the family estate had been squandered by the father, an infamous wastrel, and his son Warrick was forever looking for a get-rich-quick scheme to put the family back on its feet. But the man had no business sense whatever. Some of Harrow's worst schemes were just poor research, like the shares in the terraforming outfit that went belly-up for lack of contracts. Others were small-time criminal enterprises, low-risk and therefore low-profit, like the banned vids. And some were deals undertaken with no consideration but markup, totally disregarding the difficulties and costs involved in turning that markup into a profit.

Like the gorram cows.

He paused at a shop window, admiring a girl on display wearing a frilly pink-and white dress. _Nothing Mum would wear, of course._ _If I want to start wasting my money on frips like this, I need a bird. And not the sort Hoya's got stirring his tea._

He ambled down the lane, entourage in tow, thinking about the folly of raising beef for export on a world like Persephone. Of _course_ there was a huge market for it on the frontier worlds; many of the water- and nutrient-poor planets couldn't support herds of large grazers. By law, cattle could be imported to such worlds only for slaughter. As such, they were not only a high-profit luxury item, they were tons of water and other nutrients on the hoof which found their way into the ecosystem and enriched it. Which was exactly why luxe, conservationist planets like Persephone prohibited taking them off-world. Licensed carriers wouldn't haul them, and it wasn't easy for a dandy like Harrow to do business in Eavesdown without getting his pockets turned out. Badger was his best choice.

But finding a carrier for such cargo was no easy task, even for Badger. Cows were difficult passengers that needed feeding and cleaning up after; even with concentrated feed, they each ate fifteen kilos a day and drank God knows how much water, and special chemicals would have to be introduced to the ship's overburdened recycling systems to handle their end products. They stank to heaven and could be dangerous, especially in an enclosed space. There weren't many people flying spaceships with experience handling livestock; even colony ships usually carried their live animals as embryos in cryo. And the nearest buyer that offered a safe and decent profit on the deal was on Xianyin, presently three weeks away by paths little-used by the Alliance Navy. In the wrong hands, most of the stock would die before next landfall. Badger's list of suitable shippers was short.

He'd considered suggesting that Harrow slaughter the animals here and ship the meat, but any slaughterhouse would seal and imprint the packages, registering them for legitimate sale at controlled markup on a short list of worlds. That would force Badger to discount them anywhere else. It was marginally more profitable, he figured, to ship them live. Provided he could find someone who wouldn't kill them all on the way to market.

Presently, Howard's com unit chimed and he pressed it to his ear. Badger watched the man's features close up as he listened. "Bad news?"

"_Serenity_ just landed."

"_Serenity_." A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Do tell."

Howard put the com away. "You're taking the news well. Didn't Reynolds and his crew leave your office at gunpoint last time they were here?"

Badger's smile grew a little wider. Before Reynolds had been a captain, he'd been a sergeant. But before that, he'd been a rancher.

In his mind's eye, he saw _Serenity_ putting down at Xianyin, the cargo hatch opening, and a gasping crew slogging through knee-deep niou fun to lead their bawling cargo down the ramp. "Water under the bridge. Let's pay a visit."

*

Before the end of the day that Badger had struck his devil's bargain with Darcy and sent her to his mother, one of Hoya's bullyboys had arrived at his office with a small flat package and a card that was a work of Chinese calligraphy beautiful enough to frame. It said: _Even men who bend laws as they will must respect proprieties._

Inside the box was a circlet of silvery metal, just large enough to go round a neck, and a small lozenge of matching metal that might be carried in a pocket or attached to a keychain or even hung from a necklace as a pendant. The band was slender, faceted and very feminine-looking, quite fancy. It was a slave's collar for all of that, and could only be unlocked by the magnetic key in the pendant. It had a built-in transponder that would locate the wearer anywhere on Persephone, and most of the civilized 'Verse besides. By law, it would go around Darcy's neck from the moment she signed the papers until her indenture ended.

He'd stared down into the box. "Hadn't thought a this. Doubt she'll take it well."

"But she'll take it," Buster had said, unsympathetic. "If I have to hold her down while I slip it around her neck. She's got not a speck of gratitude for what you're doing. And if she gets a sniff of drops, she'll be gone with anything she can carry out of your house. Hoya's right. You need to mark her."

That was the collar's second purpose. It told everyone that the person wearing it was someone else's property, with no affairs of their own to conduct, and banned from handling money. It made stealing from one's master very difficult, at least when that master was a respected player in Persephone's black market. No pawnshops would be buying candlesticks from Darcy. Even the drug dealers who'd supplied her in the past would avoid her, even if she came round with cash in hand, once she was Badger's goods.

It had all been for her own good, he told himself as he walked down the quiet residential street that fronted his home. The worst of the withdrawals was over, and her health and sanity were on their way back to her. She was getting on with his mother, and seemed more or less accepting of her circumstances, even if her understanding was lacking. She was far better off than when she'd stumbled into his office, and if he'd turned her away that day, she'd likely be dead now.

Those reassurances didn't stop his gut tightening as he turned down the shrub-lined walk that ended at his door, or the need to mask a momentary cringe when Darcy opened the door for him.

"Evening, Darcy," he said as he handed her his hat – not the derby; he left his 'business' clothes at the office and changed into respectable middle-class garb that better suited a man walking down the street in this neighborhood. "Where's Mum?"

"In the kitchen, adding spices to the soup." She took his coat over her arm as well, avoiding his eyes as usual. "Will you be going out again?"

"Not if I have a say in it." He tried not to look too hard at the sunken cheeks and loose skin. Darcy was off the suety diet drop addicts were famous for and eating better than she had in months, but the last of the shakes and fever weren't that far back, and her body was still reeling from the changes. At least she was out of those slatternly outfits and in decent clothes, and he'd had her taken to a hairdresser's for a proper cut. "Any messages?"

"Mrs. Lilith, a neighbor. She apologized for her dog relieving itself on your front lawn, and sent a man to pick it up. Also-" Her chin nearly dropped to her chest. "She assures you that the girl responsible will be properly disciplined."

"Ehhh." He sat at the little changing bench, intending to slip off his shoes and to put on slippers. "What's she send it round the neighborhood for, if not to crap on other people's grass?"

"And a Mr. Ping asked if you'd reconsider an appointment to Council." Darcy knelt stiffly before him.

"Here, what's this?"

Darcy grasped his foot. "Your mother tells me this is part of my duties." She unlaced his shoe and removed it, then slid the slipper on his foot and reached for the other.

Bertram felt more than a little uncomfortable, but he realized Mum was right. A proper servant would be expected to perform such a service for the master of the house. If Darcy was to learn to be a marketable domestic, she'd have to do such things regularly. And if Darcy was going to continue to respect Mum's authority, he couldn't be gainsaying her orders. He just never had expected anyone to do such for the likes of him.

In the kitchen, his mother stirred a pot on the stove among a litter of meal-in-process. Bertram paused at the doorway to admire her. She was a tiny woman, her long hair done up off her neck and just going gray at the temples in a way he thought quite fetching. To his eye, she looked younger than her age, full of life and energy, and he was sure she wasn't too old for another man, if she hadn't been too devoted to her oldest son and his household to spare the time. He stepped behind her and put arms around. "How's my girl?"

She rested her free hand over his as she stirred. "Passable well, my heart." Her Dyton accent was much less pronounced than his, having come to the Colony as a new bride. "I got some bargains at market today, and some lovely material for curtains for the back room. And Darcy is learning the difference between a clean surface and a wiped one."

He looked about at the cluttered kitchen. Mum was usually a clean-as-you-go cook; he'd never seen the counters and stove like this at dinnertime. And, now that he was more attentive, he thought he caught a faint smell of char under the fragrance of baking bread. "What's this all about?"

"Ah, well. Dinner was a bit hectic tonight. It started out as a roast, but we put it in late, and Darcy thought she could help things on a bit by turning the oven up."

"Oi."

"I salvaged enough to make a hearty stew, I think." She sighed. "Sometimes I despair of teaching her to cook."

"Time, Mum."

"I know. How was your day?" She wasn't asking about his business, though occasionally he would discuss some of his dealings with her. She knew what her son did for a living. She was asking how he felt at the end of the day about what he'd done.

He kissed the side of her head and grinned. "Oh, had a _very_ good day."

A little after supper, he was at his desk, reading shipping news from the Docks, when he heard the doorbell sound. He caught the reflex to answer the door, reminding himself he had a servant now, and sat with the flimsy in his hands and an ear cocked towards the entrance. He heard a man's voice that he thought was Howard's, and rose to greet his old friend.

Darcy stepped through the office door, Mal Reynolds in tow. "Mr. Eaton," she said, formal in the presence of strangers, "Captain Reynolds to see you."

Bertram frowned. He didn't like bringing his Eavesdown business home. "Tell the lady of the house we have a guest, Darcy. And bring tea."

Reynolds watched her leave. "That mare looks ready to drop in her traces, Badger. You might think to feed her once in a while."

"How I deal with my servants is none a your business. What are you doing here, Sarge? Who gave you my address? And why aren't you getting ready? The ball starts in two hours." The ball was neutral ground and a sop to Harrow's pride, where Reynolds, a man who shared His Lordship's public contempt for Badger, would nevertheless arrange the deal Harrow was so desperate for.

"No rule sayin I got to stand at the door waitin for it to open. And we have a little business of our own to do before I step through."

"Is that right?" Badger had already discussed the cargo without going into detail, and had given the captain an estimate of his cut. "They've offered thirty a head," he'd said to Serenity's captain, "But once they've got you there and think you've got nowhere else to go, they'll cut the offer in half. Don't settle for less than twenty."

"Twenty. And if I can get more?"

Badger had turned up the corners of his mouth. "Well then, I'd say you're a better man than me." He imagined that would provide Reynolds with some incentive to drive a hard bargain. But until Reynolds had Harrow's handshake on the deal, he didn't see what else needed to be discussed.

"I'm gonna need an advance. For expenses."

"Expenses?" He scoffed. "Last business arrangement we had fell through, and I lost a bit a coin. On expenses."

"That was your choice, Badger."

"And one I'd make again." Bertram pushed down his irritation. "I already gave you the invites. What else do you need?"

Reynolds' face stiffened further. "A party dress."

*

"A pleasure making your acquaintance, Mrs. Eaton." Reynolds bent over Mum's hand. "Thank you for your kindness. And your company."

Mum smiled up at him, her hand still in his. "Yours as well, Captain Reynolds. I could wish all Bertram's guests were so charming. Are you sure you won't take home some soup?"

"I may be making the mistake of a lifetime, but no. Just wouldn't feel right to bring such treasure home without enough to share."

"Right, then," Bertram said, feeling an irrational twinge of jealousy. "Let me walk you to the street, Captain."

When the door closed behind them, Reynolds said, "It makes sense now. Till the girl opened the door and led me to you, I was half sure I had the wrong address. But it's your mother's house."

"Right enough. But I picked it and paid for it."

"Still, doesn't seem your style."

"'Style'. A lot of contempt in such a little word."

They reached the sidewalk and stopped. The captain turned round to look at the house, tucked among ornamental trees and carefully-trimmed grass and planting beds. "There are limits to the contempt you can feel for a man loves his mother." He turned down the sidewalk and clopped away.

"He seems nice enough," Mum said when he returned.

"He can put on a good show when he needs. But I didn't engage him for his manners, Mum. He's a smuggler."

"Well! That sounds romantic."

"Only in fiction. In real life, it's mostly about being sneaky and cunning as a rat." He walked towards the kitchen. "Is that pie cool enough to eat, d'ya think?"

Darcy was bringing the tea service out of his office. She paused with the tray in her hands and stared in his direction. Then she set it on a table and hurried off towards the bedrooms.

Mum smiled. "I think Captain Reynolds makes an impression on you too, of a sort. Else you wouldn't have walked out to the street with him in your slippers. I think Darcy's gone to fetch your spares, before you track any more dirt across the carpet."

Bertram's next visitor arrived after dark. At this hour, Bertram shooed Darcy away and answered the door himself, with a pistol behind his back.

Howard and Buster stood on the stoop. "Trouble."

*

"I ask you, what could have been simpler?" Badger groused as he and his crew marched towards _Serenity's_ berth. "Reynolds shows up at the ball with his mate, slides in among the rubes chatting up Harrow, gets in good with him by trading a couple snide remarks about me, and brings up the deal. Harrow lets himself be convinced after a little more sucking up, and Reynolds leaves. How could _anybody_ muck that up?"

"Heard the fight started over a girl," Buster offered.

"I don't care. You don't punch a man out at the bloody Governor's Ball! I'll never get another favor from the bloke gave me those tickets." That was the least of it. Atherton Wing, the hittee, was a well-groomed new-rich thug of the sort who was prickly about his 'honor', probably because his sort had so little of it. He had taken the physical insult as an excuse to call a duel, making an even greater spectacle of the embarrassing event. The authorities (both the official ones and the actual) were watching events unfold with a sharp eye for further improprieties. Hoya was watching Reynolds' ship, wishing he could ground-lock it, likely. Word hadn't taken long to go from one end of the Docks to the other that Reynolds was Badger's man, and at the Ball at his orders. And now everybody at Eavesdown was wondering what sort of people Badger might be dealing with these days.

Badger was remembering how Reynolds and his crew had "solved" their little problem with the Alliance cruiser – with a showy escape – and was now on his way to _Serenity_, determined to prevent history from repeating. He didn't much like the idea of boarding a ship full of bullyboys and ex-military types. His people could get hurt. But the men walking at his side and at his back knew the game and the stakes. They'd all joined Badger's crew for a chance to carve out a decent life for themselves and their families, and they weren't about to let some lieu mang with a spaceship run off and make a scapegoat of their Badger.

They approached _Serenity's_ loading ramp, which was raised like a castle's drawbridge and looking right uninviting. The ground in front of the personnel door in its center was dimly lit from its built-in worklights beneath the gooseneck, but the door was shut tight. Badger figured he'd invite himself aboard while his boys stayed out of sight near the door, ready to rush in at a signal. It wasn't much of a plan, but he thought he'd likely come up with a better once he talked to those aboard and got the lay of things.

Footsteps, quick and light, pattered towards them from the dark. A girl rushed headlong into the light, dressed in the pink dress he'd been admiring that morning. She was looking down at the ground mostly and holding up the bottom of the long dress to keep from stepping on it as she ran; so intent was she that she didn't notice the group at the ramp until she was in the light. Then she drew up short, her mouth an O of surprise.

"Here, love," he said soothingly, an idea forming in his head. Mokey and Ralph moved to flank her and prevent retreat. "Easy, now."

"Who are you?"

"I'm the fellow bought the dress you're wearing, or I miss my guess." The girl was a little jewel, with chestnut hair bound up in a pink ribbon and a sweet face just a compliment away from dimples, a very unlikely doxie for Malcolm Reynolds, he thought. He'd been sure the tall dark one on his crew was his mate in more than one sense, the way they seemed joined at the hip most times.

"You're Badger?"

"The very same." He removed his hat, pressed it to his chest, and smiled at her. "Who are you?"

"I'm Kaylee Frye. The ship's mechanic."

"Ah." Badger nodded. "That's good. I was hoping Reynolds didn't spend my money on some dock girl he was trying to impress." He put his hat back on and made a twirling motion. "Turn about. Let's see the whole thing."

Hesitantly, the girl complied, looking over her shoulder at him in a manner that was unintentionally enticing. "I took good care of it. You can take it back."

"Wouldn't dream of it. I've passed by that store window half a dozen times, trying to think of a girl I knew pretty enough for that outfit. You belong to each other." _Besides, it's Reynolds' money._

She cast her eyes down. "Didn't look much like the other girls at the party."

Her tone of voice told the whole story, and struck a nerve. "Pfft. I've seen the latest fashion. You can keep em, thank you. Old upholstery scraps stitched together by a blind man. Those girls wouldna been caught dead in one at last year's ball, and won't be at the next. Probably be wearing flour sacks instead, and telling each other how lovely they look." Kaylee's smile was tentative, but it was there. Having eased her a bit, he went on. "Heard about the trouble. Did he hit that bloke over you?"

"No. The guy was with Inara, and I think he said something."

"Inara?"

"She's the Companion rents our number one shuttle. She's my best friend."

_The tall dark quaint, this little gem, and a Companion. The man's traveling with a bloody harem. _He remembered the way Reynolds had charmed his mother, and deliberately relaxed his jaw. "Do the others know?"

"Not yet. That's why I was running."

He nodded sympathetically. "Well. I've come on that very errand. Praps it'd be better if they hear it from me." He glanced at the men flanking her, and they moved closer. "You wait right here."

Badger's visit aboard _Serenity_ was an education. His experience inside ships was limited. Although he did business from one end of the 'Verse to the other, he'd only traveled by spaceship once, when he'd left Dyton. He hired ships all the time, and dealt with their captains, but usually in his office or some neutral spot; he never got an invite aboard. And Badger, though unschooled, was a man who enjoyed learning new things.

The vertical reach of the ship's cargo hold fascinated him. Why build a transport vessel with so much unusable space? Then he took note of the catwalks which could be used as scaffolding to secure tall stacks of cargo and access them easily, and reach the cargo netting that hung all the way up the walls. The catwalks also allowed easy travel for the crew; Badger reckoned there weren't two points on the ship more than half a minute apart because of them. Why that might be important he didn't know, but it had obviously been a design consideration.

His next surprise was the ship's complement. He'd only seen Reynolds, Cobb and the mate Zoë off ship. He'd supposed there were more, but when he'd come aboard and Cobb had announced him on intercom, strangers had come out of the woodwork. He was fair certain a ship this size didn't need a full-time pilot or doctor, and was _dead_ certain Reynolds hadn't hired himself a chaplain, yet here they were. Badger noted that the odd sods in the crew were all Core Worlders - even Book, though by his accent he'd left young, like Badger. It was intriguing. It seemed that Malcolm Reynolds, Like Bertram Eaton, drew people to him who felt in need of a certain something. Most of Badger's retainers were unwilling wanderers, uprooted or unwanted folk from all over, and had found in him and his organization a stopping place where they might settle in and build a more-or-less normal life. Reynolds' bunch seemed to each be running from one thing or another.

He wondered especially about the Shepherd: the way his eyes traveled over the armed men guarding the hold, as if examining them as targets, looking for weakness or lapses of attention; the way he studied their reactions when he moved close without seeming to. It gave Badger the willies, and made him very glad he'd brought so many men.

And then, there was the girl.

She'd appeared from nowhere, it seemed, since Mokey and Gru had checked all the compartments and cabins when they'd escorted the little jewel to her cabin to change and had declared that everyone aboard was in the hold. She was pretty enough to look on, with her long dark hair and big expressive eyes, but that wasn't what had trapped his attention from the moment he'd become aware of her. Before she'd ever spoken, he'd seen some other-worldly quality about her, and the way the Shepherd and the doctor had tried to get her back out of sight before Badger noticed her spoke of secrets.

And then she'd spoken to him. Her Dyton accent was as heavy as a dock girl's, but nothing in her manner spoke of such a life. She'd spoken to him of things he only discussed with himself, and everything she'd said seemed to hold a double meaning. She'd laid a single finger on him, and rubbed her fingers together as if the tiny contact had soiled her. Then she'd dismissed him from her attention and left, and he hadn't given a thought to hindering her.

But he'd thought about her for the rest of the night, while Reynolds' crew pretended to play cards and such while they talked over taking back their ship. He hadn't even bothered to try to listen. Mokey and his boys knew their business. The big black had insisted on keeping everyone together in the hold where his men could watch them – and each other - without getting too close, even bringing a chair from the ship's lounge for Badger to sit in. _Serenity's_ crew would still be discarding plans come daybreak, when word would come that their captain was dead. Badger would send them offworld with some make-work, if they'd still take employ from him. He rather doubted it. Likely, they'd lift from Persephone and never come back. Which meant he'd seen the last of the girl.

"Did you ever see such a lazy crew?"

_Serenity's_ captain came hobbling in, half supported by the arm and shoulder of a young beauty, which Badger would have bet anything was the Companion Kaylee had mentioned. Badger felt a mixture of pleasure and irritation. So the barstid was a swordsman too, to have survived the duel. And now being linked with Reynolds could be turned to advantage. Having it talked around that Badger had some responsibility for putting Wing in the dirt would make him some new friends.

He rose and put his face into Reynolds'. "You get us a deal?"

"_I_ got a deal. Now get off my ship."

Badger didn't rise to the taunt; he knew Reynolds and Harrow hadn't cut him out of anything. Harrow would come up with another ridiculous scheme before long, and would have to come to Badger to figure a way to turn a profit on it. Their affairs were forever bound together; in a sense, Harrow was Badger's man as well. He twirled his hat and put it on his head, observing the captain and the woman together, rather closer than walking support required. _Guess I've seen his doxie at last._ "So, very much for a lovely night then," and called his men.

Back in the dirt, Gru said to him, "I've seen that look. Never on you, but I've seen it. Which one? The little redhead?"

"No." Mokey's dreds tinkled as he shook his head. "The wraith. The crazy one."

"Tsai bu shir."

"And why not?" Badger determined to do a thorough investigation of everyone aboard that ship, starting with the doctor, the Shepherd, and the girl. The next time _Serenity_ touched down at Eavesdown, he'd know more about its crew than they knew about each other. "We hit it off well enough."

"She treated you like something she scraped off her shoe!"

"Do you know nothing bout women then?" Bertram Eaton smiled. "A bird gives you that much attitude on first acquaint, it's as good as a wink and a smile."


	3. Mixing Business with Pleasure

"I shouldn't be here," the woman said, looking at Badger with trapped eyes as she took back her hand. "But I don't know who else I can turn to. I know nothing of these things."

_That's obvious enough,_ Badger thought. His visitor had made an attempt to be inconspicuous: she'd arrived for her appointment without escort, and her robes lacked the bright colors and fancy stitchwork normal to upper-class ladies in public this season, and she wore no jewelry. But her eyes were made up in the uptown style, and her garb's rich material and perfect tailoring had surely shouted _money_ to everyone who'd seen her on the streets, and a blind man would have known gentry had passed by from her scent. He rubbed mental hands together in anticipation of a fat fee.

"Then it was pure good fortune brought you to me, milady, for I'm just the bloke to help you." He led her away from his office desk to the little reception area, where Ho sat in his usual place on the sofa. Badger speared the secretary with an eyeball, and the man stood as if he'd been goosed. "Mr. Ho, will you instruct someone to bring tea for our guest? And wipe the seat before you go."

The prospect perched primly on the edge of the sofa while Badger settled into the chair on the other side of the low table. She offered him a tiny smile. "Thank you. You are most considerate."

_Unexpected courtesy from Eavesdown riffraff, no doubt. _In Mandarin, he said, "My Lady, we are now private. None of my servants now present speaks this language."

He didn't know for certain if the woman sitting before him spoke Chinese, either. Mastery of that language was considered a sign of culture on the Core Worlds (excepting Sihnon, of course, where it was spoken by the lowest peasant, and English was the second language), and Persephone styled itself an honorary member of that club. But most of this pretentious planet's upper crust had only a rude grasp of Mandarin unless they were well-traveled or their business required conversational fluency. The best families, however, ofttimes sent their female offspring to Companion schools for a few years for a sort of finishing-school education (and, though they'd never admit it, to make them more tempting marriage prospects). Such a one would surely be conversant in Mandarin, he thought. He had observed the woman's poise and carriage, even when she was upset, and had made a guess.

The woman's eyes widened. "Thank you, kind sir," she replied in flatly accented Mandarin. "Please forgive my poor treatment of the noble tongue. I learned it as a young girl, and have had little opportunity to refresh my skill."

"Quite understandable." He smiled at her. "Both your speech and your explanation. I'm sure we can continue in this language without mishap if you wish. Or, if you fear being misunderstood – and your trust of a stranger extends so far – we can return to English." He gave the men scattered about the room a studied look. "My associates are loyal and close-mouthed. And discretion is the bedrock of our profession."

Ho returned with a tea tray, which he set on the table between. The lady accepted a cup and waited for him to serve his boss and leave. "I think, then," she went on in English, "that I will trust to your professionalism, rather than to my childhood schooling."

Badger nodded in acknowledgment. "To business, then. You wish to deliver certain items to a man you think is in Georgia system. You want him found and the items placed in his hands. And you don't want anyone to find out about it. Have I got it?"

She sipped delicately. "Yes. Succinctly put, Mr.…"

"Badger." He gave a little smile. "A professional sobriquet. Ask anyone at Eavesdown who Badger is, and they can tell you." He leaned back. "What you ask is very doable, and needn't be expensive, depending. I'll need to know about the man receiving the goods, of course: who he is, and his relationship to you. And what the parcel is." He kept his voice neutral and uncurious; this was usually the sticking point in such negotiations, even more than price.

"Mr. Badger…"

"Just 'Badger', milady."

"Badger, this is a private matter."

"And it will stay private. But I need to know, at least. It may determine how I deliver the goods, or the parties involved. I won't risk my people through ignorance." He sipped his tea and watched her while she considered.

Finally, she said, "The man is my son. My only child. He quarreled with my husband, and my husband disowned him. The delivery is his personal belongings. Items of sentimental value, that sort of thing."

Badger looked into his cup. "And money."

She hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. All I could glean from the household accounts and items I sold that I hope won't be missed." She stared down into her cup as well. The tiny vessel trembled. "If my husband finds out, I don't know what he'll do. But I have to do this."

Badger reached across the table and took the cup from her hand. "It's a hard thing, having your child taken from you." The prison on Dyton hadn't allowed visitors. Mum hadn't seen her firstborn in the flesh from the time he'd been led out of the courtroom until he'd fetched her to Persephone. And it broke his heart to see her with Bernard on visiting day. "Don't you worry, milady, we'll see this done."

The woman's eyes misted, threatening to spill over. Badger reached hastily for the hanky sticking out of his breast pocket, pulling it out for the first time since he'd acquired the jacket, and looked in disgust at the grubby linen, soiled from long residence there in Eavesdown's dusty environment. "_Somebody._ Bring the lady a clean kerchief _now_."

"I'm sorry," the woman said, wiping delicately with her fingertips at her brimming eyes, trying not to smear her makeup. "I'm sure I'm being an extraordinary burden."

Badger decided he liked her, and resolved not to assess her the surcharge he usually levied on his upper-class clients. Not because he thought she couldn't afford it, but because it, like his trademark coat and derby, was intended as a subtle insult to the zang shang liu who usually tried to conduct business meetings in the Docks without touching anything or looking people in the eye. Nothing this woman had said or done merited the twenty-percent putting-up-with-you add-on. "People in trouble are often troubled," he said, hoping he sounded sage. He smiled. "But they usually bring their own hankies."

Buster hurried in with a folded piece of soft white cloth. Badger noted the unstitched edges, recognized the snowy material, and made a mental note to find out which of Buster's daughters had sacrificed a petticoat.

The lady took the scrap, and if it looked rude or uncouth to her, she gave no sign. "Thank you." She blotted her eyes and cheeks.

"If I may have the young man's name," Badger said, all business again, "and any other pertinent you can give me, we'll start straightaway. Are the goods ready to travel?"

She nodded. "I'll need a day to get to them, though."

"That's fine. I don't want to paw through your son's personal. Can you provide an inventory?" At her nod, he went on. "Good. Keep it all hid until I send word."

"I'll do just as you say. Thank you, good Badger."

"Well," he said, feeling oddly uncomfortable. "It would be best if you don't come back here. Do you have a servant you can trust to carry messages? Mayhap even deliver the goods here when the time comes?"

"I…" She shifted. "No. Not with this. The house staff are all rather more loyal to my husband, I'm afraid. After all, he holds their contracts."

Badger nodded. "That's all right. I'll find someone to carry messages at least." _Good luck finding someone in my crew who won't stick out in an upper-class neighborhood, even dressed as a servant._

Ten minutes later, the woman took her leave. Badger and Buster accompanied her to the outer door. "Thank you again, good Badger," she said, eyes shining. "Your help has been beyond price. Whatever you think is fair, I'll pay." She offered a hand, palm-down.

Badger shrugged his head. "My hand is dirty, milady. That kerchief."

Her hand remained poised, waiting. "The dirt will wash away. The memory of your kindness will not."

He took her hand and impulsively raised it to his lips as he bowed. In Mandarin he said, "I have perhaps seen this day a glimpse of true nobility in a world of pretenders."

She blushed, but smiled, and turned away. Badger watched her travel down the narrow street, drawing speculative glances from vendors and passersby until she was out of sight.

"I know we're getting paid for this," Buster said, "but it almost feels like charity work."

Badger shook his head. "Buster. You bought that story?"

Confused, the big man said, "Well, why not?"

Badger turned back inside for the trek down the corridor to his office. "Right nice, wasn't she? Treated us all like regular folks. Quite the egalitarian."

"Come on. You think it was all an act?"

"No. I think she's what she seems. So how is it she's been in her husband's house long enough to have a grown son and not one person on staff she can trust?"

"Like she said. The old man runs things."

They reached the office, and Badger sat at his desk and inserted an apple into the peeler. "She said he owns the contracts. But you can bet she's got ten times more face time with the servants than he does. Don't know how it is at your house, mate, but the women rule the roost at mine. Sometimes I feel like the family pet, not the lord and master."

Buster chuckled, then sobered. "So. Check her out?"

"Three times."

-0-

Badger was walking unescorted down Soupcan Alley, the long row of simple berths reserved for small tramp ships come in for local business. As he made his way down the crowded street, he spied a commotion up ahead that experience told him signaled the launch or arrival of another ship. All the street vendors in front of the empty space between two ships were packing up and moving down the road, urged on by a couple of Hoya's men who were directing foot traffic. The port registry kiosk in front of the space – called a 'parking meter' for some arcane reason – was flashing blue, already demanding input. He searched the sky and spotted a blue-white pinpoint, growing larger as the vessel approached.

He decided to tarry a bit and watch the show. It amused him to watch how Eavesdown traffic parted around a new arrival, only to have the vendors and traffic resume before the dust settled and the ship opened its doors. It was like watching a stone dropped into a shallow pool, the return wave closing over it the instant it touched bottom. _Life on the Docks_, he thought. _Nothing interrupts it long. It was here before I was a gleam in my da's eye, and feet will still be beating this road into dust when I'm not even a memory._ He smiled at the thought.

He glanced up at the incoming ship, and was surprised at how much closer it had grown. The pinpoint of its drive had resolved into two points now, and they were much larger. _The bloke is almost falling on us_, he thought with mild alarm. _What's the gorram hurry?_ Then he remembered one regular visitor whose pilot was fond of fast approaches and takeoffs.

Badger faded back into a canvas-walled curio shop across the street. The proprietor's scowl disappeared when he saw who the loiterer was. "Badger. You need something special?"

"Just a place to get out of the dust for now, Zim. Less you've got something new in the way of kitchen gadgets."

The old man displayed a small knife with a strange pivoting slotted blade. "Just found these. Very old design. But a very big seller. You can't beat the old ways, eh? For peeling potatoes, not apples, but it works like a charm." He demonstrated on a spud from a bin by the counter, shaving a long thin curl of brown peel from the side of the tuber. "No waste. The point is for digging out the eyes. Works on strawberries, too." He produced a small box of plump berries, neatly popped a stem from one with the tool, and offered both to Badger. "You like, I make a deal. Five or more, I make a better."

Badger bit into the strawberry, savoring the tart-sweet taste and the odd, almost furry texture. "If I buy, it'll likely go into my kitchen, not my inventory." He winked. "I deal with goods offer a higher markup."

The sky rumbled, and dust stirred on the concrete pad opposite the shop. Zim closed the fine mesh curtains, and they watched the dust leap up and disappear, scoured away by the hot wind of the ship's exhaust. _Serenity _settled to the ground and deployed its stabilizer legs. By the time the drive pods had rotated to horizontal and swung down to the ground, foot traffic had resumed as if the ship had been there all morning. The vendors re-established themselves in the street fronting it and all around, some setting up right against the cooling drive pods. Zim opened the curtains again.

Badger dickered with the old man with one eye on _Serenity's_ ramp. By the time he got Zim down fifty percent on a lot of ten, the ship's personnel door swung back. Reynolds stepped through, followed by the little red-haired mechanic. They headed for the kiosk, which was still blinking. As the little jewel began entering registry data into the 'parking meter', she said, "Hydraulics regulator's about done. And we could use a new grav boot. Or at least one that don't spew smoke every time we go to hard burn."

"We could use food in the larder, too," Reynolds said testily. "You want new parts, or you want to eat?"

"Either of those parts busts, we're driftin."

"Seems like every time you ask for somethin anymore, you use that line." Reynolds looked up and down the street. Badger couldn't tell if he was looking for something, avoiding the little jewel's eyes, or just impatient to be off.

"That's cause I don't pester you with the little stuff anymore. I know we don't have much. If the water comin outta the taps turns brown, we'll get by till the next stop. But I can't keep her flyin much longer on duct tape and wishful thinking." In a small voice, she added, "You think maybe we could put in at New Home soon?"

Reynolds turned back to her and locked eyes. "Ni zai zhuo shen me? Little Kaylee, you lookin to get off, go back home?"

"_No._ I just thought… maybe we could get some work done at the shop. On advance."

"Credit, you mean." The captain's jaw set. "'Advance' means you already got some idea how you're gonna pay it back." He turned away. "We'll find somethin here. If not, well, maybe we'll revisit that notion."

Badger, perplexed, watched the ex-Browncoat stride down the crowded lane. Most tramp ships operated with little cash reserve, but that had mostly to do with their crew's inability to hang onto a coin if there was something to spend it on. The crew of _Serenity_ sounded hungry and desperate. That didn't make any sense. Their recent raid on Niska's skyplex had spread their name over half the Rim; they must generate interest wherever they grounded, he thought. How could they be so on their arses? As he watched Kaylee finish up her data entry, the thought of her and the little dark-haired wraith trapped out in the Black aboard a dying vessel moved him to action. "Zim. Twenty at the last price, if you throw in that box of berries."

"Done," the man said, surprised. "Will you take them now, or send for them?"

Badger scooped up the box and tucked it to his side with an elbow. "Just these for now. I'll send a man before close of business."

He stepped through the traffic to the kiosk, coming up behind her. "Well, now. Just get in, then?"

She turned to him with wide eyes, which he thought quite fetching. "Mr. Badger. Hey." She peered over his shoulder, looking for his retinue, no doubt.

He gave her a smile. "Just 'Badger', love. And I'm not here to storm your ship. I'm just out for a bit of shopping." He brought out the box of berries, and noted the way her eyes tracked them. "Happened across these. They're quite tasty, I think. Try one?"

She took one carefully, as if it were a precious stone, and sampled. The pleasure on her face was almost sexual, and Badger looked away, embarrassed. _How long has it been since this lass had a decent meal?_ Pretending to study the street, he said, "Where's the rest of your gang?"

"Still aboard, mostly. Cap'n wants to reconnoiter some before shore leave."

Another strange. "Do tell. Going to another party?"

She offered him dimples. "Not with the Cap'n. Might get caught in a shoot-out." She flicked her eyes away from the berry box in Badger's palm.

He offered her the box. "Another? I've already had so many I'm full up." As she made her selection, he asked, "You still got that dress, then?"

She showed her dimples again and did a little bob, almost a curtsey. "I got it hanging at the foot of my bed, where I can look at it all the time."

"Good. I'm glad to hear the captain let you keep it. He's gone, you said?"

She nodded. "Sorry."

"I'm not. I'd rather talk to a pretty girl any day." He offered the box again. "You've been gone awhile. What brings you to my little patch?"

"Just looking for work, is all."

"Well, there's plenty to be had. Not a ship on the Alley right now is going to lift without cargo, I'll bet my watch on it."

"That'd be nice."

The girl's skeptical tone disturbed him and sharpened his curiosity. A thought occurred. "Provided, of course, you're not too fussy about minding pesky little rules. Import restrictions and tariffs and the like." If Reynolds was trying to go legitimate, it would explain the ship's financial straits. There wouldn't be much work at Eavesdown or anyplace like, and the established carriers shut every tramp out of any regular run offering a real profit. Going 'on the books' was a fine way for a small independent to go broke, but he thought it was something the stick-up-the-arse Browncoat might try, just to keep from having to rub elbows with the likes of Badger.

But Kaylee's mouth twisted in something resembling amusement. "Tsai bu shir. I think we'd haul bout anything right now."

He probed further. "What about passengers? They don't pay handsome, but there's always blokes want to go somewhere in a hurry. You could make a little coin, if you pick a proper route." To hide his true interest, he added, "I might be of use to you there, for a small fee."

Her eyes flicked towards her ship. "Not looking for passengers. We're kind of full up."

So the Tams were still aboard. Their story had been easy to dig out, mostly. He'd been relieved, when he'd heard the doctor and the dark-haired wraith had the same name, to learn that they were brother and sister rather than husband and wife. Then he'd seen the arrest warrants.

_Simon Tam: Kidnapping. Accessory to murder in the commission of a felony. Drug trafficking._ _Criminal trespass on Federal Property. Theft of Federal Property. Conspiracy. Aiding and abetting an escape from custody. Flight to avoid arrest. _Quite an outlaw, for a man who didn't take off his vest in his own parlor. A posted reward of fifty thousand credits, a hefty sum even for the charges listed. Badger was sure there was more to the boy's story.

River Tam's warrant was simple and enigmatic: she was charged with a violation of the Security Act, a charge with no description, only a number. That meant she'd broken one of the Alliance's unpublished laws covering important state secrets, laws revealed only to those judged at risk of breaking them unknowing. How an addled schoolgirl could run afoul of the Security Acts seemed beyond logic.

The posted reward for River Tam's capture was three hundred thousand credits. When he'd seen _that_ number, Badger had called his source and asked for a reprint. But when the flimsy in his hands had blanked and refreshed, the message was exactly the same.

Badger's half-formed notion of inviting the good doctor and his sister off-ship for a bit of hospitality had melted away. Eavesdown was a relatively safe place for someone with a price on his head; a man like Simon Tam might walk through it safe if he knew a few people, especially if it was known he had business with Badger. But a reward big enough to buy a fleet of tramp ships might be judged worth the risk even of Badger's displeasure. While _Serenity_ was grounded on Persephone, River Tam couldn't be allowed off the ship.

Badger gave a quiet sigh. Given the nature of his last visit aboard, it seemed unlikely he'd ever get an invite, so he wouldn't be seeing her again. But it was a comfort to know she was still aboard. Or would have been, before the conversation he'd overheard.

Badger had dug into their histories a bit as well. The Tams were a very well-to-do family mostly from Osiris, involved in shipping and passenger lines. Badger wasn't surprised; the boy looked like the sort who couldn't take a whiz without a servant to open and close his fly, and maybe shake it after, too. For all of that, he'd had a reputation as a first-rate doctor on a world whose medical care was second to none; Badger surmised that Simon Tam was probably the finest and best-trained doc on the Rim. Spending his days patching bullet holes aboard _Serenity_, and whatever else he might be doing to earn his keep, must bore him to tears. Taking care of his strange little sister couldn't be consuming _all_ his time.

Or could it?

River Tam was a prodigy, and more. She was a student who struck her teachers with awe, because she seemed to learn faster than they could teach and often surpassed her instructors before a course of study was half complete. Her academic record was full of glowing reports, but Badger got the impression that many of her professors were uneasy around her, and none formed any personal attachment. He was sure he understood why from his meeting with her: she made them feel they'd been judged and found wanting, a feeling that wouldn't sit well with people proud of their education.

None of her teachers had mentioned erratic behavior, or emotional instabilities.

Her academic record had ended at fourteen. In fact, _all_ her records had ended then, with her withdrawal from the Capital City Academy for the Gifted. Three years later, her paper trail resumed with her arrest warrant. Badger put the pieces together and concluded that those interfering busybodies in the Core government had decided to take her in hand and "develop" her in some experimental program that had gone agley. She'd run away, with her brother's help, and now the authorities were looking for her, to take her into custody or silence her some other way, in order to cover up their mistake.

He'd been a bit embarrassed to note that she was just shy of eighteen. What would Mum think, seeing him so moonstruck by this strange and broken child just reaching for womanhood?

He cleared his throat. "So, your preacher's still aboard, then?"

Kaylee nodded and smiled. "He said he was a missionary when he came aboard. I think he found his mission."

Badger forced a return smile while a lump appeared in the pit of his stomach. _Mission. I wonder. _He hadn't got much personal on the man _Serenity's_ crew called 'Shepherd Book', but Badger knew where he'd come from now, and what sort of business he was in, and why he made Badger nervous. Badger just hoped the man's presence aboard the same ship as the runaway Tams was coincidence and not _mission_, or at least that his intentions toward them were benign.

"Badger me lad," a too-friendly voice broke in behind him. "Don't often see you cruising about all alone. Sometimes an audience cramps your style, eh?"

Badger turned, deliberately casual, but keeping between the newcomer and the girl. "Hullo, Bo. What brings you to this end of the Docks?"

Bo Bien looked down on them, a toothy grin appearing from the center of his neatly-trimmed goatee as he looked over the little jewel. "Heh. Don't worry, little man, I'm not here to poach. Bao bei, are you crew to yon ship?"

Kaylee glanced at Badger with equal parts appeal and apprehension. He returned his attention to the big mercenary captain. "She might be. What'd be your business with her?"

"Not the same as yours, by the look. I'm here about a job."

"I'm sure they're not hiring."

"Ah, but I am."

"Doubt they'd be interested, mate. Your sort of work's not their cup."

The merc's smile changed. "Praps they're ready to change their taste. I'll have a word with their captain and see." He pushed his head and shoulders forward, almost leaning over him. "Or are you their agent now?"

Badger took a small breath, gathering his calm. He felt in no danger from the big man, even knowing Bien's history; two of Hoya's men had been watching _Serenity_ from down the street since she'd landed, and were sure to move in at the first sign of real trouble. But people looking down at him were irritating, especially if they were trying to intimidate him. "No. But I've an offer of my own to make the captain. Cargo."

Bien chuckled. "I'm sure mine's better. Best find another tub to haul your goods, less they're headed for Foundry One."

Badger had heard of the troubles at Foundry One. The Foundry Stations were a group of orbiting industrial complexes in the vicinity of New Pittsburgh, a world whose sky, it was said, was never dark or still, and you had to get above atmo to see the stars. Some of the Stations circled the planet; others its single moon, or the gas giant farther out in its system. They engaged in a variety of manufacturing and mining tasks that were better done in microgravity or close to their raw materials in space or just too dangerous to be performed near population centers.

The Stations employed thirty thousand people. The work was a mix of skilled and unskilled labor, and generally hard and dangerous, but the operators were well paid. That is, until the corporation that owned Foundry Sixteen had started replacing the facility's workforce with indentures - just the unskilled jobs at first, but collared workers had begun appearing at the control consoles as well. Even with the additional guards on the payroll, the slave labor was cheaper than hiring at a fair wage, and the owners of the other Foundries were taking notice. Some had begun to follow suit.

But the workers at the other Foundries had noticed as well, and they'd begun to organize to keep the indentures out. The owners would have liked to fire the troublemakers, but there weren't yet enough indentures available with the necessary skills. So the workers were threatening a general strike while they still held the companies' profits in their hands, and were pushing for collective bargaining and a ban on indentures.

The companies that owned the Foundries were dealing with the workers' revolt in a variety of ways. Some made promises, and likely would keep them. Others stalled for time, talking politely to the workers and paying lip service to their grievances while casting about frantically for skilled indentures to strengthen their negotiating position. Others took a harder stance, employing every legal means to enjoin the workers from organizing and force them back to their jobs. And still others took a more direct approach: labor leaders had been offered bribes – sometimes successfully - threatened, blackmailed, beaten. As the conflict heated up, organizers' meetings had been broken up violently by hired thugs, and a few labor leaders had disappeared – run off or killed, no one knew.

Present conditions at Foundry One, the biggest and oldest of the Stations, were close to open war. The workforce had responded to violence with violence, and it wasn't just labor types getting beat and burned out there anymore. It had got to the point where it was unclear who was running things at Foundry One. Badger wasn't surprised to learn its owners had hired types like Bien to put things in order.

Letting _Serenity's_ crew join Bien's bullyboys for an expedition to Foundry One would be putting the wraith and the little jewel between an anvil and a hammer.

He offered Bien a stiff smile. "That's not how it works, mate. Y'see, Captain Reynolds and I have arrangement. I have first refusal on his services when he comes to Eavesdown, on account of our long-standing business relationship." A complete lie, but if Reynolds wanted to sign with this gan ni niang later, a harmless one.

Bien spat. "What kind of feihua is that? I can offer him twice what he could make with you!"

The little jewel was standing behind him, one hand in the crook of his elbow; he could feel her trembling. He glanced down the street, which had suddenly cleared. Hoya's men were gone. "Not everybody works for the highest bidder regardless, Bo."

"I'll hear that from him." Bien turned towards the ship.

Badger sidestepped in front of the big merc, pulling Kaylee with him. "The captain's not here. And I'm sure you're not welcome to wait aboard."

Bien glared down at him, their chests almost touching. "Ni xiang si shi bu shi?" He growled, a ritual last-chance warning to a slave or other inferior. "Out of my way, you little rodent. I won't say it again."

"Glad o' that. I'm tired of hearing it already." Badger craned his head up to look him in the eye. "Back a pace, big man. You're frightening the lady. And Captain Reynolds don't look kindly on men treat his women with disrespect, or haven't you heard?"

The _ka-click_ of a revolver's hammer being drawn back was loud in the empty street. "He surely don't," Reynolds said. Badger and Bien turned heads to see _Serenity's_ captain standing ten feet away with his pistol pointed at the sky at shoulder height. "Whoever you are, you got no business here. Gun ku ku."

The man turned his glare on _Serenity's_ captain. "You gonna let this little weasel tell you what to do?"

"No, I'm gonna let the little weasel tell _you_ what to do."

"And this little weasel's telling you to go find someone else to recruit." Badger looked calmly up, waiting.

Bien wavered, then stepped back. He curled a lip at Reynolds. "I thought you were somebody who'd take a risk and didn't mind getting your hands dirty. How'd your lot ever get the best of Adelai Niska?"

A voice spoke from _Serenity's _ramp. "You keep jerkin our chain, you're gonna find out." Jayne Cobb stood just outside the door, hand on the handle of the knife at his belt.

Six men in the uniform of Hoya's guards appeared around a corner and walked briskly towards them. Reynolds uncocked and holstered his weapon. Jayne folded his arms.

"This isn't over, Badger." Bien turned and started walking away from the approaching guards.

"Yes it is," Badger replied, "Or you'll never find a profit at Eavesdown again."

"Kaylee," Reynolds said, "I told you not to trade words with any slimy types come around."

"I didn't, Cap'n. Badger didn't let him near me."

Reynolds reached past Badger to grasp her upper arm. Jayne said, "I'm bettin Cap'n was includin Badger in that warning."

Kaylee said quickly, "Badger came with a job offer, cargo."

The captain hesitated. "Is that right?"

Badger shrugged. "Nothing big. And you'd have to deadhead out to get it, unless you can find passengers or cargo here. But it'd top off your tanks, with a bit o' jingle left over." _And maybe enough to buy the little jewel a better 'grav boot', whatever that is._

"What and where?"

"Dyton Colony. Two or three crates of fresh produce, apples."

"Apples. From Dyton."

Badger understood Reynolds' dubious tone. Dyton Colony didn't export foodstuffs; all it exported, really, was trouble and troublemakers. And even if it did, there were plenty worlds closer to buy apples from. But Badger was in no mood to explain. "Yes."

"What's in em?"

"Nothing. Do you want the job or not?"

"I'll ask again. What's in em?"

Badger's ears rang. Softly he said, "You calling me a liar again, Sarge?"

"I'm sayin it's an unlike place to buy your fruit, Badger."

He would have walked away without another word if not for the pleading look on Kaylee's face as she looked from him to her captain. He gave a mental sigh. "Fine, then. The boxes are inspected and port sealed already, but you'll have my writ permission to open and inspect. But you'll pay retail for spoilage." Badger turned to Jayne. "And pilferage." He handed the box of berries to Kaylee. "Mind you share with the others, little girl." He stalked off before she could thank him, but also before Reynolds could make her give it back.

Badger fumed all the way back to his office. Why was it the simplest job with Mal Reynolds never went smooth?


	4. A Certain Weakness

It was after business hours, and Bertram Eaton was at home, feeling all was right with his world. His belly was full from dinner, a cordial stood on the desk in front of him, and Kenji's latest accounting showed this to be his best quarter in two years. The smell of pies baking in the kitchen scented the house; Reynolds had come through with Badger's shipment from Dyton, and the stiff-necked barstid, his honor impugned, hadn't even unsealed the crates. The only unsatisfactory detail of the whole affair was his mother's promise of a pair of apple pies for _Serenity_ by suppertime tomorrow. Not that he minded the little jewel and her friends getting a taste of his mum's cooking; it was just that his mother had invited Captain Reynolds to pick them up.

His contacts in Georgia system had located a few likely young men and were working the possibilities down, learning things about them to compare with the information Lady Binh had given them; it wouldn't do to approach the wrong man, after all, and risk word getting back to the husband. The lady's story had checked out, after a fashion: she was his Lordship Morris Bihn's second wife, married only three years and childless; a son, however, appeared on Binh's genealogy record, with the first wife listed as dam. Both marriages had been arranged, a common circumstance among old money. The master of the house had a reputation as a prickly hundan with no friends. It seemed quite possible that the young man might enjoy more parental affection from his stepmother than from his natural father.

And to top all, Dr. Tam had accompanied the apple crates to Badger's office. The boy had looked very ill-at-ease, and Badger had wondered what bothered him most – the dirt, the company, or the exposure. "Doctor. Odd to see you out and about."

"Well. I thought I might do some shopping," the doctor said, brushing at his pants leg. "For the ship's infirmary."

Badger had smiled wide. "Is that right? Well, look no further. I have good connections, and I'll offer you a discount, you being a business associate, so to speak." Actually, pharmaceuticals were getting difficult to unload due to a recent surge in supply, and the idea of getting some of his money right back from Reynolds had made him eager to close a deal. "Give me a list, and I'll see what can be done."

Kenji had raised eyebrows at the doctor's list, but got busy. Badger had offered tea while they waited. The doctor had accepted, Badger thought, mostly because politeness had been put into him at birth.

"So," Badger had said, looking down into his cup, "what happened to the passenger?"

"Passenger?"

"The one you were treating. The strange girl."

"I- ah, she's doing fine."

"Still aboard, then?" To give the boy time and help thinking up a lie, he'd said, "That tub o' yours has been halfway cross the 'Verse since I saw her. She hasn't got off by now, she must not be in a hurry to leave, I've got a feeling."

"She's taking a rest cure," the young man had said. "No destination, really, just getting away from it all."

Badger had nodded. "A vacation, eh? Seems like she could use one. Still, very nice, don't you think?"

Simon had nodded jerkily. "Nice. Yes. Do you suppose I should come back later?"

Kenji had said, "All done, Badger," and handed in a flimsy. Badger had scanned it briefly and passed it over. Tam had reached for it eagerly; Badger had wondered if he was in need of something, or just wanted to get on another subject.

The young man's demeanor had changed immediately he held the list and scanned its contents: his nervousness had disappeared and he'd been all business. "You carry some unusual items. What's Variapsin doing out here?"

Badger had shrugged. "Lately I've been picking up job lots disappeared out of Core hospitals. Some purchases, but selling goods on consignment, too."

Too casually, Tam had said, "Do you ever get any Palimine? Or GTP?"

Badger had kept his poker face on. He'd never heard of Palimine, but GTP was a powerful psychotropic and euphoric which came in fashion now and again as a recreational drug among the children of the upper crust. Did someone aboard _Serenity_ have a habit? "Don't usually handle that sort of thing, though I can point you to someone reliable. Anything else take your fancy?"

The doctor had selected a dozen items from Badger's list. Most were everyday stuff like painkillers and antibiotics and treatments for common ailments. But a couple of his selections had tweaked Badger's whiskers. "How much for these, in small quantities?"

Badger had considered. He'd offered a discount. If he asked street value, he doubted this young Core World dandy would know the difference. He doubted Simon Tam had ever gone without anything before his flight, and wasn't likely to have learned the price of pharmaceuticals or anything else cooped up aboard ship. He'd sighed inwardly and quoted a price ten percent off the going rates.

The young doctor's eyebrows had risen. "I thought there was a mention of a discount."

"Eh?"

"I'm quite sure I could get better than ten percent from a stranger."

Badger had grinned wide to hide his surprise. "So you might, if you could trust him to sell you what you were paying for."

"I think I can tell whether I'm getting what I pay for. Twenty-five."

Well, I'm a man enjoys a good dicker." Another thing learned. One charge among the list of unlikely crimes on Simon Tam's warrant, Badger remembered, had been drug trafficking.

They'd settled on a twenty percent discount overall, and twenty-five for some of the less in-demand stuff. Doctor Tam retrieved his list and put it in his pocket. "About those other items. Forget I mentioned them."

Badger had smiled. "Mentioned what?"

After the young man had left with his purchases, Kenji had showed Badger a slip of paper. "I copied his list. The ones he asked about that weren't on it, too, but I don't know if I spelled them right. And the weird stuff he bought."

"Good man." Badger had scanned the list and returned it. "Ask around, but quiet-like." He'd hooked his thumbs in his belt. "Let's find out what the good doctor's into."

He'd had his answer before close of business. All the drugs Simon Tam had been wanting on the quiet were used to treat mental disorders. GTP was a euphoric, but it was used by medical professionals to quell hallucinations and anxiety. Palimine was commonly prescribed as a treatment for schizophrenia. Some of the others were exotic biomeds used on accident victims with severe head injuries.

Maybe taking care of his sister was more challenge than Badger had thought.

A small knock at his study door brought Bertram out of his reverie. "Come in," he said.

Darcy came into his office with a small flower bouquet in a vase.

"Here," he said, "What's this?"

"Fresh flowers from the south planting bed. Your mother thought your office could use some color and scent." She set the vase on the corner of his desk and arranged them with her fingertips. Her hands moved and turned with a fluid grace that held his eyes and made the simple task seem like a performance. She studied the result, a tiny smile touching her lips. "They're very pretty, don't you think?"

"Very." It came to Bertram that he hadn't really looked at Darcy in a while. He did so now, noting that a few months off the drops, combined with good food and regular exercise, had left her slimmed down and filled out in all the right places, and restored her skin tone as well. Her dark hair had grown out enough to brush her shoulder blades, and had reacquired the almost electric sheen he remembered so well. She was looking very good indeed, he thought. It nudged him into a decision.

She noticed his regard, and she gave him a rare glance. Her brows drew together prettily. "Is everything all right?"

"More than all right." He leaned back in his padded chair and smiled. "Word, who's the yao jing in my house?"

She started and locked eyes, for the first time since she'd gone off the drops and regained her wits. "What?"

He smiled wider. "You've got your looks back, Darcy."

He'd expected at least a polite xie-xie or the ghost of a smile from her over his compliment, however well-deserved. The reaction he got was unexpected and puzzling. Darcy's expression blanked and her eyes slid off him. Her step became slow and deliberate, almost mechanical, as she moved to the door. When she reached it, she stood silent, eyes downcast, without her usual evening inquiry as to whether that would be all. Then some small movement from her breathing made the collar glint, and he understood.

"Little girl," he said softly, "are you really standing there on the wait for me to send you to my room?" He sighed heavily and leaned forward to pick up some papers off the desk. "Good night, Darcy. We'll see you in the morning."

Her lips parted and she exhaled. "Bertram-"

"And make yourself up extra nice. It's visiting day."

Doris Eaton was looking through the staples in the pantry, planning tomorrow's meals. She knew Bertram had thought that a storeroom for nonperishables was unnecessary now that he could afford daily deliveries of anything she wanted, but he had indulged her, as he always did, and had had the little shelf-lined closet built just off the kitchen. He believed it made her feel secure and comfortable after their early days of dearth, she supposed, but she simply found it convenient, especially when she was at a loss for something to fix. And it had come in handy more than once recently, when she'd been forced to salvage one of Darcy's meals at the last minute.

The matriarch of the Eaton household smiled, comparing D'Arcy Eaton nee Etienne, the haughty hothouse flower of their early relationship, to the wretch that George and Yuki had brought to her door, then comparing that creature to the oft-befuddled but earnest girl that she'd become under Doris's roof. But, as much promise as Darcy showed, she still had a long way to go to learn cooking, and humility, and the virtues of service. A little of that spoiled upper-class brat surfaced from time to time, whereupon Doris stepped on her hard. But there was no real anger or resentment left in Doris for Darcy Eaton; she had more patience for such behavior now that she didn't feel forced to put up with it for Bernard's sake. And the girl was genuinely trying. It made Doris shake her head to realize that Darcy seemed more like a daughter now, with a collar round her neck, than she had as mistress of Bernard's house.

Darcy appeared at the door of the tiny room, deer-eyed and breathless as if she'd been chased there. "He's taking me to the prison tomorrow. Can't you talk to him, change his mind? _Please._"

Doris put down a twinge of irritation. _And why wouldn't you want to see your husband? Didn't you make a vow to him?_ But then the girl's hand stole up to touch her collar, and the woman thought she understood. She turned back to the cans on the shelf. "Bernard signed papers, Darcy. He knows you sold the house and the investments. And he's no fool, not about most things. He knows you've got no knack for living within your means. After three years, he won't be surprised to hear the money's gone and you're deep in debt."

"I thought I'd have a chance to ease him into it, that maybe… maybe Bertram could put in a word." The girl's voice turned bitter. "Not much chance of _that_, not after…" She wrung her hands. "Tell him I didn't mean… It was just so… Oh, I don't know what to _do_!"

Doris decided perhaps she didn't understand after all. She waved the girl away from the door and brushed past to the kitchen. She nodded at the table. "Sit." When she saw Darcy settled in, she stood on the other side with arms folded and said, "Right, then. What's this about?"

Darcy fastened her eyes on the tabletop. "I went into the study to ask him if he wanted anything before bed. He… looked me over, and said I was pretty. More than that. He called me a yao jing."

"Say what?"

"A vamp, a tempting woman, a, a..."

"A hot piece. I've heard the phrase. Go on."

"Why would he say that, if he didn't want me?" Darcy took a quick breath. "When the money ran out, after a while, I got tired of… I did things. For drops. For food, too, and a place to sleep, but mostly drops. It was only hard at first, and then it was entirely too easy. It isn't the first time I've been called a yao jing or something similar, and always by a man looking for one thing from me. I hadn't given it a thought since I came here, not till tonight, but when he looked at me, I was sure he knew, and he..." Her fingers curled, putting faint scratches in the fragrant polish on the table's surface. "What have I done?"

Doris put her hands flat on the table and leaned over. "It sounds to me like you've misjudged the master of the house badly, and insulted him besides."

"But… I don't understand at all! _Did_ he know?"

"He knew before he took you in, I warrant. Even if he didn't know people who'd tell him, he knows what addicts will do to support their habits, and what you had to offer. At least before the drops took it from you." She sat across from the girl. "What, exactly, did you do then?"

"Nothing. I didn't know what to do. I just froze and waited. I was hoping he'd change his mind if I didn't seem… if it became obvious I didn't want to… that I was waiting for a direct order. And then… oh, Buddha, the look on his face when he realized. I wanted to crawl away and die. That's when he told me he was taking me with you to see Bernard." She clasped her hands on the table. "Have I got it wrong again? Was he angry because I assumed, or because I refused to act willing?"

Doris placed a hand over Darcy's, the first time she'd touched them since the girl had arrived at her door. "So, you think praps he's taking you to see Bernard to get some back, to remind you what you were, and are, and shame you in front of your husband. Mayhap you're even thinking this is what he had in mind for you all along." She squeezed the clasped hands. "If that were so, twere better done a month ago, don't you think? When it was obvious?"

"I hadn't insulted him by… whichever way I did it. By looking at him like he was a wang bao dahn who wanted to use me, or by refusing him if he was."

The mistress of the house made a rude sound, startling the younger woman. "How can you share a roof with someone, make a living catering to them, and know them so slight? My Bertram hasn't a whit of trouble giving people orders they don't like. And I could laugh out loud at the idea of you refusing. You're his to do with as he pleases till that collar comes off, young miss. He could even give you lashes after for 'unsatisfactory performance', and the law wouldn't so much as blink. It happens too often, you see. Plenty of the zang shang liu treat their hired servants like gosa, and their indentures even worse. You've seen it, I'm sure." Unspoken were the words: _And I don't doubt you've indulged in a bit of it, in your parents' house and your own. _Doris was pleased to see two spots of color on the girl's cheeks.

"Or maybe," she went on, "you think he bought you just to make a bedwarmer of you, and get his revenge that way. Believe me, girl, the revenge would have had to be sweeter than any sex to make him want to lay hands on you. You might remember that you came to him for help because there wasn't a man in Eavesdown who still wanted you. He couldn't have known you'd clean up so shiny; drop addicts hardly ever do. And he could afford any prostitute he wants - a Companion even, if he could find one who'd dip her pretty nose and deign to accept him. He didn't buy a broken-down drop whore to wet his willy." She smiled at the girl's expression. "Surprised to hear me talk salt? Sure, you haven't forgot where I came from? You reminded me often enough."

Darcy dropped her eyes back to the table. Doris tugged at her hands until she raised them again. She went on. "When Martin was killed, I was a twenty-year-old widow with no salable skills and two babes, one still crawling. You think I kept a roof overhead and food a-table just taking in laundry and scrubbing floors? On Dyton?"

Darcy's eyes went round. "Do they know?"

"Bertram does, I'm fair certain, but we've never talked it about. But that's one reason why he'll not dishonor a woman for his pleasure. Not even if she's willing to endure it for money." She folded her arms on the table. "You've heard the story of him going to prison for stealing an apple?"

"Yes. The day Bernard introduced us. I… said something to him about Bertram's table manners at the buffet, and he puffed up and told me, by way of explanation. I never knew whether to believe it."

"Strewth. And not the only blow my eldest has taken from an uncaring world." _Like seeing his brother married to some ornamental society doll and pulled into the current of her useless life._ "The judge who sentenced him is big in Dyton politics these days, and lives fat and happy and ignorant of what he made when he sent a sixteen-year-old boy to be schooled to a life of crime. Bertram's got the wherewithal to ruin or kill the fancy lout – has for years – but I don't think it's even crossed his mind. If he can turn his back on _that_ temptation and get on with his life, I doubt he thought your little snubs worth six thousand to pay back."

Darcy's voice was barely above a whisper. "Why, then, Doris? Why did he?"

"I think you're clear-headed enough to figure it out. If you can shed your prejudice as easily as your addiction, anyway." She rose. "Off to bed, child. Your master wants you to look your best when you see your husband tomorrow, and that starts with a good night's rest."

-0-

Bertram, Mokey, and Darcy stood in a three-sided shelter just outside the prison gate, the only waiting room the facility provided for visitors. As was often the case, no other prisoners had friends or relatives waiting to enter for the next visitation period. Mokey looked ill-at-ease without his rifle, but he scanned his surroundings with care – while keeping an eye on his principal and his principal's property. Bertram was certain that, if Darcy went didi-bao and ran for it, she wouldn't get three steps.

He examined her without being obvious. She'd done as he'd instructed, and was wearing an outfit that was modest and flattering. Her hair and face were done up. She looked like she was on her way to meet someone important to her. He was pleased, as well, to see that she hadn't worn something ridiculously high-necked in an attempt to hide her collar. She was outwardly calm, but kept casting glances toward the entrance as she waited her turn.

Eventually the door opened and Mum came out clutching a kerchief. Darcy drew a breath and squared her shoulders.

"Wait," Bertram said. He raised the magnetic fob and squeezed it. The collar unlocked with a tiny snick.

Darcy's hands flew to it, eyes round. "You can't-"

"Give it here. Tell him you're staying with me and Mum, if it comes up. That's all he needs to know."

She went in. Mokey raised an eyebrow. "Isn't there a big fine for that? And what if she runs?"

"Gor. She's walking into a _prison_. One way out - past us. And who inside's going to guess she's bonded?"

"Still doesn't explain why." Mokey looked at the prison door. "Just make sure it's back on her before we leave the shelter."

They waited. The allocated time came and went, and the next visiting period began. People visiting other prisoners walked out the door, and Mokey looked them over carefully. A few others walked in, none stopping at the little shelter.

Mokey leaned toward the door. "I can take a look."

"No. She'll be out."

Time ran out on the next period. Some of the people who'd walked in earlier walked out, eyeing them curiously. Mokey snake-eyed them, and they hurried by.

"Mum," Bertram said, "It's getting on time the good captain will be at our door for his pies. Why don't you go on home with Mokey? I'll wait for her."

"Not a good idea," Mokey said.

"Course it is. It's mine." Badger snapped his fingers and pointed to the street. "See her home. It's getting cold." In a lower voice, he added, "And mind you don't let the two of them out of your sight."

He sat alone on the bench inside the shelter. People came and went, some stopping in the shelter to wait. None tried to strike up a conversation. Time slipped by.

Just before the end of the final visiting period, the door opened and Darcy stepped out. He rose to meet her as she stepped down the short walk. Any thought of chastising her disappeared after one look at her face: her makeup was gone except for a tiny smear at the corner of one eye, but she was glowing. He held back his smile with an effort. "Went well, I take it."

"Yes," she said simply, and extended her hands, palm-up. He started to reach for them, and she said, "My _collar_, Bertram. Before the others come out."

He produced the indentures' collar. She started to take it, then reached behind her neck with both hands and lifted her hair instead. She turned her back to him, facing the prison door, and gave him an over-the-shoulder look. "Do it for me, please?"

He stared at the girl's slender white neck, its bare skin looking smooth as a babe's, and his breathing started to deepen until he reminded himself he was eying up his brother's wife. But some strange change had come over his sister-in-law since she'd come out the gate: Darcy seemed softer somehow, more poised yet more yielding, all her rough edges and uncertainty gone. He'd appraised her looks the day before and judged her fit to see her husband, but this sultry and confident creature was another woman entirely. His voice deep, he said, "I trust you."

"Trust has nothing to do with it. I want to make sure it's on properly. I'd die of fright if it fell off in public, or while I was serving tea to a guest."

Bertram stepped up close behind her, closer than he'd ever been, very conscious of her breathing and body heat. He slipped the ends of the collar around her now-slender neck and seated them together, feeling them mate with a grip of steel. He tugged at them, trying not to touch her. "It's right."

"Good." She dropped her hair onto his hands, bringing a faint perfume to his nose. "Thank you, Bertram."

His hands seemed paralyzed, unable to loose their grip on the collar. The very tips of his fingers rested on the back of her neck. "I just thought you two had better things to talk about."

"Not for taking the collar off. For putting it on. The first time." She bowed her head, pressing her skin against his fingers. "He told me, about your promise. It was the last piece of the puzzle." She leaned back and let out a tiny breath. "I didn't make it easy for you, did I?"

"Making it easy for other people's not your style." He stared at the back of her head, trying not to breathe in the scent of her skin and hair, and to ignore the softness and warmth of her body where it touched his, feather-light, and the silky feel of her hair on his hands. "Darcy, what are we doing here?"

"I owe you more than I can ever repay. But…" She hesitated, then plunged on. "Bertram, if you ever call me a yao jing again, or tell me to turn down your sheets, I won't be dragging my feet on the way to your room."

Bertram felt heat rising into his cheeks. "Gor. That _isn't_ why I said it."

"I know. But please don't tell me you've never thought about it, even before Bernard and I were married; I've had some Companion training, after all. Bertram, I, I know something about pleasing men. It's not much to offer you, I know, but it's all I have."

_And you're using some of that training on me right now_, he realized. "Don't say that." He stepped back and grasped her shoulders and turned her to face him, forcing her to meet his eyes. "If I thought that was all there was to you, I wouldn't have bothered. I brought you under my roof because you're an Eaton now, least till you leave us or Bernie sets you free." A thought occurred, and his smile and composure returned. "And besides. I've got better uses for you."

-0-

Kaylee was busy at the galley's cooktop, humming absently as she worked on supper. The new grav boot had been installed this morning and tested out just fine, and Wash had called her a treasure. The maintenance budget hadn't stretched far enough for a new hydraulics regulator, or even a trustworthy used one, but she'd found a used part that would likely mend the one they had, if Cap'n would consent to ground the ship a couple of days. She knew their fortunes hadn't turned, not really, but for now, they were still flying.

Kaylee knew she pulled an unequal share of the cooking aboard, but she didn't mind, usually. Cooking tired after a shift in the engine room was more to her taste than trying to hand that chore to someone else. Zoë knew a thing or two about preparing shipboard fare, but she plain hated cooking the way some folks hated getting shot at. Inara was a gourmet chef, but her skill required all manner of fancy ingredients never to be found in _Serenity's_ larder. The Shepherd was a passable cook, and pulled extra kitchen duty with a smile, but he was off-ship right now, visiting at the Abbey.

As for the other menfolk, the only one presently of use to her in the kitchen was Jayne: he kept the knives sharp. Wash, city boy from an automated industrial world that he was, couldn't fix anything that didn't come packaged and get prepared in the cycler. Captain Tightpants' kitchen skills ended at slicing fruits and vegetables, of which they had none, and making coffee. Simon's two attempts to feed the crew had gotten him banned from the working side of the kitchen.

Only Simon would eat something River cooked unsupervised.

At least, she thought, she had a pretty view while she worked. She could see out about half the two rows of small square windows that ran high along the walls fore and aft of the dining area. The sun was shining something fierce, and the puffy clouds drifting by were a treat she'd learned to appreciate from all her time in the Black. And, of course, the occasional ship would rise or drop into view, and she'd guess what sort of shape the drives were in by the sound.

And if there was nothing to look at out the windows, she could admire the artwork on the galley walls.

_Serenity_ had come out of the factory painted all over inside, like all ships: walls done in neutral drab institutional colors, highlighted by warning marks in bright reds and yellows and color-coding on pipes and conduits and such. In the decades since then, the colors had mostly faded or been rubbed away, down to primer or bare metal, and been left that way.

But someone had prettied up the galley and eating area, sometime before _Serenity_ had ended up in that salvage yard where the captain had found her. Kaylee was tickled by the hand-painted strands of ivy on the conduits and structural supports and crossing the walls, enough that she'd sort of copied the pattern to decorate her door. It gave her a little warm feeling to think that her girl had been a family ship at least once before, maybe with another name, even.

But, if so, what had happened to her first family?

Kaylee decided that, much as she'd like to know, it didn't really matter. _Serenity_ was her girl's name, now and forevermore, and she was Kaylee's, like the other folk who crewed her were hers, and that was what mattered. Her nostrils flared at the memory of the captain asking her if she wanted to leave the ship. Run out on her girl when she needed her most? When Kaylee's people most needed her skill at keeping things running that their lives depended on? Men could be unbearably sweet, but they could also be such chowderheads.

As if on cue, Jayne appeared at the forward hatch and clomped in. "What's for supper?" He leaned over to sniff at the pot.

"The usual. Can goods and cleverly disguised protein."

"Powers. We're sittin on the ground with a market right outside our door. Why can't we put somethin on the table that don't take so much work ta look like food?"

"Cap'n went out for something, says it's a surprise."

"Hope it ain't a guest. A couple payin jobs don't make us prosperous. Where's Fancy Pants and Crazy?"

"Their names are Simon and River," she said patiently, "and why do you want to know?"

"Cause it's good sense ta know where that girl is all the time. Never did figure out how she laid hands on my pistol and ammo. And if she comes in the kitchen while I'm here, I wanna be between her and the knives."

"Jayne, she's been acting right normal lately, almost. You should give her some-"

"'Actin' is right. You never know what's goin on behind them spooky eyes. She could go berserk quick as flippin a switch. Who knows better'n me?"

Behind him, River appeared at the hatch, silent as always. Kaylee opened her mouth, about to speak a warning.

"Cap'n had any sense, he'd lock her up at night," Jayne went on. "Got no hard feelins, I just don't want a repeat, or worse. And who knows what she does or where she goes when the rest of us is asleep?"

The girl in question seemed not to hear; in fact, she seemed not to be aware of anyone else in the room. She stood on the stairs, her eyes traveling along the wall almost at window height, and brushed her palm down the big vertical pipe alongside the door. Kaylee closed her mouth and decided not to call Jayne's attention to her.

Jayne dipped a finger into the pot, grinned, and stuck it in his mouth. Then he turned to leave, saw River, and froze.

"This room was her favorite, so she made it hers." River touched the painted ivy. "There were real plants, too, in boxes along the windows, and a bonsai on the table in the lounge. An herb garden in the big window aft. She cooked and served every meal, made the others feel cared for and at ease here."

"Y'see," Jayne started, "that's just what I - "

Kaylee flapped her hand to shush him.

River glided down the steps and approached the beat-up wooden dining table with its mismatched chairs. "Different table, round, with a red top. Five men, all older but one. The captain looked down on her, made her angry or tearful sometimes. But the others were kind and friendly, and the handsome young pilot was sweet to her." She smiled. "She dreamed of running off with him."

The addled girl stared out the windows at the bright sky. "They were always in the Black. Landfalls were rare, settled worlds few and far between. It was where they worked." She gazed down at the flooring as if she could see through it to the deck below. "The hold was full of equipment, no cargo but sample containers."

Kaylee looked at Jayne. He shrugged. "Prospectors, maybe," he said in a low voice. "Or surveyors. Core Worlds useta contract ships for scoutin expeditions, send em out to the Rim lookin for rocks to terraform. But they quit doin it twenty-thirty years before the War."

River turned to regard the forward hatch and the passage to the bridge and crew quarters, but she didn't speak. _Five men,_ Kaylee thought, _and five crew cabins_. She waited as long as she could stand, then asked. "River, which room did she sleep in? Do you know?"

The girl blinked, and Kaylee thought maybe the question had snapped her out of whatever spell she was under. But then she went on, "All of them. In rotation. Except for the captain's. When he was done with her, he sent her away, and she always fled to the pilot's room. She was assigned a cabin, but it was just a place to change and store things." She turned to look at Jayne and Kaylee. "Hard and lonely out in the Black. She kept them sane, mostly. She made a place here, but cook wasn't what they hired her for. She was the ship's whore."


	5. Judging a Book by its Cover

"Okay." Wash squinted in the bright sunlight beating down on them. "Hold it right there, big guy. Kaylee, can you see it yet?"

The little redhead lay on her belly on the sun-warmed hull plates. She reached deep into the dark access opening crowded with lines and conduit, unmindful of the heavy hinged plate Jayne was straining to hold open above her head. "Yep. Wait a minute…" She withdrew her head and arm, and the heavy plate dropped into place with a bang. Wash secured it with a tool.

Jayne grunted and stood with his hands on his hips. "Thought these gorram things were motorized."

"They open hydraulically," Wash said as he finished and stood. "But Kaylee drained the system to reinstall the regulator. We have to check the connectors before we pressure it up and bleed it."

The big merc scoffed. "These doors shoulda opened up some other way then. Sounds like a design flaw ta me."

Kaylee wiped her hands with a rag and stuck it partway in her back pocket. "This job is sposed to be done in a yard, with a crew of techies and fancy equipment – including jacks for opening the panels. Not her fault."

He scowled. "This is feng le, just the same. One slip, and you're gonna get your head cut clean off."

"Best not slip then." Kaylee wasn't bothered by Jayne's complaints; she knew he wouldn't let the plate fall on her if it cost him his arm. He was just letting his mind run in neutral, was all. Jayne's grumblings were as soothing to her as the purring of some big cat. "Wash, where's the next one?"

The pilot consulted his clipboard. They were just forward of the galley windows, about where the hull started to slope upwards. "Ten meters up the gooseneck on the starboard side. Right side," he said to Jayne.

"I been on enough ships to know the lingo, little man. What I don't get is why Kaylee's gotta be the one ta stick her head in the bear trap every time."

Kaylee brushed a strand of damp hair off her forehead. "Cause my hands are smallest. It'd take Wash forever to find those connectors. How long you want to stand holding that plate?"

"And I don't think you and I should trade jobs, either," Wash said to Jayne. "This clipboard can get pretty heavy." He headed up the gooseneck, and the others followed.

Kaylee looked up into the sky. "At least it's a beautiful day." Persephone was one of those worlds that didn't have a clearly defined sun in its sky; the atmospheric shield diffused its light to a bright patch that covered a quarter of the bowl overhead and threw soft fuzzy shadows on the ground. But it was plenty bright and warm. "You can see so much from up here."

Wash studied his clipboard. "You can see a lot more from half a click up."

"You can't see people." She could see out to the horizon in all directions except to the north, where the cityscape blocked her view: trees and buildings and aircraft in the sky, a bustling green world. She looked out over the busy little port and the figures moving in every direction. Voices and other noises rose up from the street to reach her ears: vendors hawking their wares, dogs barking, the clatter and squeak of horse-drawn wagons, music in half a dozen styles. She saw travelers carrying burdens, performers twirling and tumbling, barkers gathering attention with wide sweeping gestures. And, a ways down the street, a familiar silver head bobbing in the crowd. "Hey. The Shepherd's coming back. And he's got a big sack over his shoulder, looks like. I think we're gonna have some fresh for supper to go with that last pie."

The two men looked out over the street. "Doesn't seem to be in a hurry," Wash said.

_He never does_, she thought. _Even when he moves fast, you feel like he planned it all out in his head beforehand. _Kaylee studied the dear old man as he moved through the crowd, his head turning this way and that. "If I wave at him, do you think…" She let her voice trail off as she realized the Shepherd wasn't traveling alone.

"He's with somebody." Wash saw it too. "Another monk, I think. Can't make him out too well in the crowd, but the topknot's the same. Didn't he say it's a requirement of his Order?"

"It's a woman," Jayne said.

"A girl monk?" She turned to him.

He shrugged. "She's dressed in Shepherd clothes." He studied some more with his sniper's eyes. "Skinny and blonde. Not bad." He grinned. "Aright, Shepherd."

"_Jayne_. He's not allowed. He swore an oath."

"Ayuh. I promised a judge once I wouldn't get in no more trouble. Think I was eighteen."

Wash studied the pair in the street as well. "I'm trying to imagine Shepherd Book with a girlfriend." He shook his head. "Nope. Just not coming."

The pair stopped maybe sixty yards down the street and stood talking, letting the crowd swirl around them. The lady monk was a handsome older woman, fair-skinned, her light yellow hair lightened up even more by a streak of silver that started from her left brow and arced over her ear into her topknot. Kaylee couldn't make out the color of her eyes, but was certain they were light, blue or green or gray maybe. The two monks chatted, smiling. Then Shepherd Book set his bag on the ground to give her a four-hand clasp. He picked up the sack and she turned back the way they'd come.

Kaylee watched the Shepherd stroll towards the ship with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face until he disappeared under the bridge overhang. She decided to have a little talk with him after dinner.

"Show's over, I reckon." Jayne wiped his forehead with a forearm. "Let's get this done. I feel like a flea on a griddle up here."

Wash pulled a rag from his back pocket and tossed it to the big man. "Here. You keep dripping like that, you're gonna create a slip hazard." He held a hand up. "No, no, you just keep it. I don't need it."

"You don't need it cause you ain't doin nothin. Why you even up here?"

Wash lifted the clipboard, smiling. "Double check. If we miss one, we'll have to drain the system again and start over. Every connection. Every heavy inspection plate. Every-"

"I get it. So lead on, and let's finish this."

A few minutes later, Jayne dropped the next panel into place and mopped his neck and face. He paused, looking back at something on the side of the ship. "She goin somewheres?"

Kaylee followed his eyes to the number-one shuttle. Locked in its cradle, it still stuck out far enough for a view out half the windshield. Inara sat in the pilot's seat, looking thoughtful. She noticed her shipmates' regard and gave a little wave, then stood and disappeared inside. "Guess not. She seem a little off today?"

"And last night." Wash made an entry on his clipboard. "I don't think dessert sat too well with her."

"That pie was wonderful. And she said she liked it."

"I think her exact words were, 'Unsubtle, but flavorful and made with care and attention to detail.'" He reached into his pocket and pulled out another rag, and dabbed lightly at his forehead with the wadded cloth while Jayne glared. "I don't think her problem with the pie was the way it tasted. More like where it came from."

She frowned. "Shuh muh? He wouldn't say where he got em."

"Exactly. But when a man goes to a bakery for a pie, he comes back smelling like fresh bread, not a flower garden."

-0-

"You've been awful cheery since you came back." Kaylee accepted a wet plate from Shepherd Book's hand. As she'd expected, he'd offered to help with dishes, and they had the kitchen to themselves. "Good visit?"

"Excellent visit. The brethren are extending the gardens, the Bishop's health is improving, and I got to greet an old friend I missed saying goodbye to when I left the Abby."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"She was on assignment elsewhere. But now she's back, and with good news."

"Did you just say 'she'?"

He scrubbed a plate vigorously. "Yes. Sister Risa. Known her for years. We did missionary work together." He caught her glance. "I never told you there are women in my Order?"

"Never came up, I guess. But I saw you together when you came back." She took the plate from his hand and wiped it without looking at him. "She seems nice. Why didn't she come aboard?"

"Ah. Well, I described the captain's attitude about religion to her, and she felt it might be … awkward. She's very devout."

Kaylee thought that one over. The Shepherd was easygoing about the captain's hostility to faith, but if this Sister Risa was the kind who couldn't help trying to convert people… "What was the good news?"

"Ah." Shepherd Book smiled wide into the dishwater. "I'm afraid that's a secret."

-0-

Darcy came out of the secondhand shop, fussing with her newly-purchased clothing. She'd chosen the shop and her purchases with care. The store was near the fuzzy transition between the 'respectable' and 'gentry' sections of the city, not a place she'd likely be recognized from either of her former lives. She was dressed in loose pants, a lace-front shirt with a scoop neckline, and a short embroidered jacket: last year's casual wear for the upper crust, the sort of castoff clothing the mistress of a fine house might gift a favored servant with.

"You know what that quaint is thinking, don't you?" Bertram stepped out of the store behind her, dressed in the conservative middle-class suit he'd had on when he'd entered with her; he'd had to handle the actual transaction, of course, though he'd only stood by as she'd picked out her disguise. He'd scowled at the young female clerk's sly glances as Darcy had modeled the clothing for him, and had brusquely slapped the coins on the counter in front of the girl's outstretched hand after she'd totaled up the order.

"She thinks you're a man who's dressing up his favorite little slave girl. I'm sure it happens all the time." Darcy picked a speck of lint off her sleeve and wriggled her feet in the slipperlike shoes that had come with the outfit. "But she didn't recognize either of us, and has no reason to remember the transaction. And now I'm properly attired for a trip to the Old City. That's what's important." She caught his eyes on her. "What?"

"Enjoying the feel of silk on your skin again, little girl?"

"Should I lie?" She caught herself just short of making the little hand gesture of a woman requesting the offer of an arm; escorting an indenture as if she were a belle would be scandalous behavior, even for a man besotted by his plaything's charms. "But I know better than to get used to it, Bertram. Will you return it later?"

He scowled. "Praps. Or give it away as a deal premium. I don't like it on you."

"Then let me go about your business so I can get out of it. Whatever your business is," she added pointedly.

"She's jumpy about leaks, so you'll know as little as need be at first meet. She's bound to question you. This way you can look her in the eye and say you don't know anything when she asks. You're just a messenger I found, since there's no one she can trust in her own house. You sure you won't be recognized?"

"I only met Lady Binh twice before Bernard's indictment, brief greetings at large social gatherings, the sort where you spend the night speaking a word or two to everyone in the hall. She won't remember me. I know Lord Binh rather better through my father, but she's not likely to introduce me to her husband, is she? Everything will be fine." She repeated the address and instructions he'd given her, and left him with a smile.

The skytrain trip into the Old City, where the old money kept their pricy townhouses, was an adventure. She'd never used public transportation as a woman of privilege, and had had little reason to travel when her means had shriveled. The tokens she dropped into the coin slot to pay her fare weren't real money, but they were the closest thing to touch her hands in many months. And she hadn't been out of the house on her own since she'd come to the Eaton household. She looked out the window at the scenery a hundred meters below, as the houses got larger and the crowded lots more lavishly landscaped. Eventually, she reached her stop, and took a shuttle to the proper address, a three-story mansion set on a hectare of mature trees and lush lawn surrounded by a high fence.

Darcy pressed the call button at the gate. A moment later, the screen set into the gatepost lit up to show the face of a woman in plain clothing and an indenture's collar.

"_Ni hao?_" The woman gave her a look that Darcy recognized from a thousand society gatherings: an attempt to assess their relative positions in the pecking order. Darcy knew that paid servants practiced such a caste system, but she hadn't guessed that slaves did also. Even among the lowest of the low, it seemed, there were degrees of status. "_What do you want?_"

Darcy summoned her composure. Keeping the faint Dyton accent she'd acquired out of her speech, she said, "I'm here on my master's business." _Of course._ "A purveyor of-"

"_We don't take business from door-to-door peddlers here,_" the woman said, and looked down, as if reaching for the disconnect button.

"Your mistress spoke with my master recently and he provided her with a sample," Darcy said unhurriedly. "A small token, but she seemed most appreciative. A handkerchief. I'm quite sure she'll want to see me."

A pause, and a fresh appraisal. "_Wait there_." The woman moved offscreen, but didn't disconnect, a sign that she no longer dared judge Darcy to be of inferior status. Half a minute later, she reappeared, her curt manner replaced by a certain restrained curiosity. "_Someone will be out to fetch you._"

The 'someone' was the woman herself, who eyed her curiously as she led the way into the house and through the rooms. Darcy took a deep breath, inhaling the indefinable yet well-remembered 'gentry' smell of the house and furnishings. Their route took them entirely through the house and back outside to a small flagstone patio walled in by fragrant bushes. Several chairs and small tables turned the little space into an area for private conversation. A robed woman sat next to a side table on which was set a light meal.

Despite the importance of her errand here, Darcy was momentarily distracted by the contents of the tray on the table. She hadn't tasted a croissant spread with elderberry preserves since before the sale of her house. And the other fancy pastries arranged around the teapot… She swallowed and returned to the business at hand.

The seated woman rose, an uncommon show of courtesy to one so low. "Thank you, Hanna. You may go now."

Darcy crossed her ankles and dipped in a small curtsey, waiting to be spoken to.

"Rise, dear. You come from my new friend with the marvelous hat, I take it?"

She rose. "Yes, milady." She noted that the Lady was only a few years older than she, and rather pretty.

"What is your name?"

Darcy hesitated. Lady Binh might not recognize her face, but she would certainly recognize her name, and the scandal that attended it. "It would be best not to say, milady."

"Such secrecy." Lady Binh eyed her as Hanna had, but without any uncertainty as to their relative status. "He said he would find someone 'suitable'. Are you in his service, then?"

"Yes, milady. Household staff."

"Indeed. And where did you serve before?"

Darcy took a quick breath. "Nowhere, milady."

The woman nodded. "I assumed he was a self-made man. I never guessed his family had money. One wonders why he hides his breeding and conducts his business at the free port. Does the rest of your family serve him as well?"

She hesitated. "No, milady."

"Do you have relatives in other service in… this part of town?"

"No, milady."

"Dear, you needn't address me as 'milady' every sentence. That collar is quite reminder enough who you are." A thought seemed to occur to her. "I think I may have made a careless assumption. Your collar, have you worn it all your life?"

Darcy stirred with discomfort at the woman's interest; she had never felt the slightest curiosity about the lives and histories of her servants. "No. I'm indentured, with some years remaining."

The lady lifted an eyebrow. "Convict?"

She swallowed. "No. Debt."

"Ah. Forgive me for prying. But this is… a very delicate transaction, and I prefer to know the people handling it. And you look somewhat familiar."

"People often tell me so. I have a very common face."

"No." The woman stepped around her. Darcy stood still, enduring the scrutiny, remembering the way Bertram had inspected her in just this manner just before he'd offered her three years' bondage. "You most decidedly do not." She switched to Mandarin. "You are, in fact, quite beautiful. My friend must have paid a premium for you." Unspoken but hanging in the air was the question of whether the slave girl's master made full use of her.

In the same language, Darcy replied, "It would be unseemly for a servant to discuss her master's affairs so. But he is a most generous man."

Lady Binh switched to English. "Your Mandarin is better than mine, I think."

"Chinese is spoken much more commonly at… where my master conducts his business. Many speak nothing else. A large percentage of the population is at least conversational in the noble tongue."

The woman smiled. "So much for the prerogatives of nobility. All right, dear, your interrogation is ended. Does your master send you just to make introductions, or does he have a message for me?"

"He sends word that your order is nearly completed." Darcy reached into her jacket. From an inside pocket, she pulled out a capture of a handsome young man chatting with a girl in an open-air restaurant, both apparently unaware they were being observed. The young man looked very debonair and confident, and, in Darcy's estimation, was soon destined to have his way with the young quaint. She turned the image around without letting go of it and let the Lady watch for a few moments before putting it away. "He suggests that you may wish to make the appropriate arrangements."

"I see." The color had faded from the woman's face. "Tell me. How much do you know of this affair?"

"Only the message I gave you, milady. I was given the capture with instructions to show it to you, but not to let it leave my hands; if questioned about it, I'm to claim the girl is my sister. I know nothing else of your business with my master or these people."

She nodded. "'Suitable', indeed. If this is how he keeps his guarantees, it's no wonder that he's so successful. Please tell him that I'll be ready, and will see him as soon as he sends for me."

_An odd reaction_, Darcy thought. "I could make deliveries, if my lady prefers."

"No. From my hands to his. It's not a comment on your character, I simply can't have it any other way."

Darcy nodded. "As you wish."

The woman picked up a silver bell from the table beside the chair and rang it. A servant appeared, not Hanna but a young girl. "Mistress?"

"Take this girl back to the kitchen and see that she's fed before she leaves." She hesitated. "I don't mean to imply that your master doesn't take proper care of you. But it will be midday before you can return to him, and I know you can't buy a meal on the way." A tiny smile quirked the corner of her mouth. "And I think you must have missed breakfast, judging by the way your stomach was growling a moment ago."

Darcy curtsied again. "Thank you, milady. I'm sure he'll be pleased when he hears of your consideration."

Minutes later, Darcy was sitting alone in a kitchen very much like Doris's, albeit somewhat larger, complete with wooden table. The girl had filled her a plate and cup and left for other duties.

The meal was richer than she was now used to, the seasonings no longer familiar. But her senses remembered them, and an extraordinary and frightening hunger woke in her that had nothing to do with the state of her belly or blood sugar. She felt as if she could forget her table manners entirely and shovel the food to her mouth as fast as the chopsticks could carry. It made her wonder what she would do if someone set a vial of drops on the table in front of her, after she'd been so sure they would never tempt her again. So she ate daintily, pacing herself and bringing only the tiniest morsels to her mouth at a time, resolving to leave most of it behind and eat just enough to avoid insult.

"Well," a strange and unfriendly voice said from the doorway, "how the mighty have fallen." A girl in servant's garb and a plain collar appeared, entered the kitchen, and sat down in the chair opposite, resting an elbow on the table and a hand on her chin, staring with cold amusement. "In service now, and dog-collared besides. How's it feel, now you're on the receiving end? Getting some of what you gave out so free?"

Darcy recognized the girl then: one of her former servants, domestic help. The girl had been clumsy and careless (in her estimation) and required constant instruction, and Darcy had more than once considered selling her. Darcy couldn't remember the girl's name, and of course had never heard her speak in such a tone. Her thoughts spun – not with embarrassment; she'd finished with that sort of pride. But this girl - _Lorely_, she remembered – would surely tell others she'd seen her disagreeable former mistress sitting at the kitchen table in a slave's collar. And that would engender questions that would lead back to Bertram and his business with Lady Binh.

But how to silence her? Certainly not with haughty words. An appeal for help seemed fruitless as well, judging by the spreading smile on the girl's features. Darcy had nothing to buy her silence. Except…

"Well? Cat got your tongue, little zang shang liu?"

Darcy shook her head slightly. "I simply can't answer your question, Lorely. I still don't know how it feels." She brought the cup partway to her mouth. "My lady and master are far kinder to me than I ever was to you."

Lorely blinked at the unexpected answer. "Is that right?"

Darcy sipped and nodded. "I can't imagine either of them going on for days about a spot above the door missed in the dusting. Or petitioning the Court to have a month added to my indenture over a dropped plate. Or referring to this-" she touched her neck "-as a 'dog collar'." She set the cup down and met the girl's eye. "Would my apology be worth anything to you?"

Lorely stared at her a moment. "Bring the goods out for inspection, and we'll see."

She nodded again. "Some people should never be permitted servants. There should be a test to pass or something. I'm sure I would have failed abominably. I was horrible to the staff at my parents' house, even as a young child. Sometimes my parents thought it amusing, other times embarrassing. But they never corrected me. I was an only child, spoiled and willful. After I married, having my own house to run made me even worse. I had no respect for the people who served me at all. I'm very sorry for what I put you through. Sometimes my mistress's kindness makes me think of how I would have behaved in the same situation, and I blush with shame." She made a show of glancing around. "At least my undoing has been your good fortune. The Lady of the house seems most kind."

Lorely nodded, looking at her strangely. "She's the absolute best. Everyone loves her."

"Did you come here from the auction?" Where all her and Bernard's assets had been liquidated to pay the fines and legal bills and her credit charges.

"Yes. And Anton and Gallie as well."

Darcy didn't recognize the names, but nodded. "I hope the others found places as good."

"Well," Lorely said, more softly now, "You've hung on to your manners, anyway."

"Reclaimed them, more like. Being treated like a person by your betters does wonders for your self-esteem." _As becoming a whore does for your humility._ "My master sometimes finds me useful for errands into this part of town, since I'm familiar with the streets and the ways of gentry."

Lorely eyed her clothing. "Useful. Does he find any other uses for you, then?"

"Yes. I'm learning to cook and clean, if you can imagine." Darcy smiled. "I'm sure I'm more hindrance than help in the kitchen still, but the lady of the house is patient and forgiving. She knows my history, and she's willing to teach."

"You almost sound glad." Lorely regarded her thoughtfully. "I thought you'd die before you gave up all your fine things and your fancy parties."

_I nearly did_, Darcy thought. _I couldn't give them up, even though I'd already lost them. So I sought substitutes, and found out too late I could afford those even less. After being ostracized by family and friends, I reached for whatever acceptance was offered me with both hands, and learned too late the price of my new friendships. And replacing pride of station with chemical euphoria nearly cost me everything._ The collar brushed her collarbone as she raised the cup to her lips. _When he first made to put it on me, I nearly bolted for the street, even knowing I'd be dead by morning. Now, it feels as comfortable as my wedding band. _Then she remembered that she'd pawned her rings early in her ordeal, closing off tears behind a face of stone as she'd pulled them off her finger and set them on the counter for inspection.

She took a tiny sip and set the cup on the table. "Well, I've had time to get used to it. Time enough to learn to appreciate what I have."

Darcy must have glanced at her bare hands when she'd been thinking about her rings; Lorely's eyes strayed there and lingered. "Where's your husband?"

"Still in prison. My master lets me visit. My indenture and his sentence end at the same time. I think… I think we'll be together again, if Buddha smiles on us."

The girl leaned forward until their foreheads were nearly touching. "He always was a good sort. He just didn't know how to say 'no' to you."

Darcy smiled. "He still doesn't. But I've learned some sense about what I ask of him." She looked into the girl's eyes. "Lorely, I don't ask this for myself, but for my master. He's trying to expand his business into a more affluent market, but if his competitors find out before he's ready, they'll make it hard. Some of them know me. If word gets out I've been here…"

"Stop." Lorely leaned back with a crooked smile. "You nearly had me crying for you. Don't end that lovely little story with a lie. Whatever business your master has with Her Ladyship, it's got nothing to do with selling linens. But I'll keep my mouth shut. For her sake, and your master's, and yours, zao gao." She stood and reached for Darcy's plate. "You're done with that, I'm sure."

Darcy held on to the rim. "I can take care of it."

"My house, my job. I ever eat in your master's kitchen, you'll do the duty there. Everyone knows that." She tugged it free and smiled. "You've still got a thing or two to learn about proper service, Darcy Eaton."

At the inner entrance to Badger's Eavesdown office, Mokey dropped the barrel of his gun across the end of the corridor to bar Darcy's way, as if she were a visitor. She lifted it with an outstretched finger and stepped under without breaking stride.

Badger grinned at both of them from his desk. "She's right, boyo. Staff doesn't wait less they're told, eh? Darcy, what have you got?"

She ignored Buster, eyeing her from a few paces away. "She says she'll be ready, and that she'll deliver it personally. But Ber… Badger, she lied to you."

"That right? About what?"

"The household staff is devoted to her. I'm sure she could have enlisted as many as she needed to run errands to Eavesdown."

He nodded. "She's protecting them. I thought as much."

"From what? Or shouldn't I ask?"

He considered. "You said you know the husband."

"Not much past 'omitofos', but yes."

"Is he as big a fang pi as they say? Would he disown his own son over a quarrel?"

"He did disown his son over a quarrel."

Badger seemed to relax a bit. "So you know the story."

"Yes. It was very tragic. It happened when I was a child, but people still bring it up from time to time."

Badger's brows gathered. "Wait, that's not right. How many sons has he got?"

"Just the one. He fought for the Independents. Lord Binh never forgave him, not even after the War was over and they got the news. I think it's why his first wife divorced him."

Badger shook his head. "What news? That he'd joined up?"

"No. That he'd been killed."


	6. Closing Deals

Hoya weighed the offering box in his hand. "This feels a bit light, Eaton."

"The sum is slightly greater than usual, actually, but it's all credits this month. You don't mind, I hope?"

The box, Badger thought, might even have seemed empty to the police chief until he'd shaken it. Credit coins were made of aluminum coated in plastic, and were considerably lighter than 'platinum', the small silver coins encasing a single grain of platinum that had been the de facto common currency of the outer worlds before Unification, and were still widely accepted here. And the large-denomination credit notes weighed almost nothing, of course. Hoya raised his eyebrows. "Credits spend very well here, Eaton, so long as they're the kind you can exchange hand to hand. But I'm a little surprised."

Hoya was too polite to ask, but he was too good a cop not to know what being paid entirely in credits signified. The Alliance disallowed the use of platinum on the Core Worlds, as it did all 'hard' currency, even the credit coins it minted for use on the outer worlds where its electronic finance system was struggling to take root. But it was unable to stamp out the detested maverick currency. The value of the platinum floated against the credit, its value ranging from one-third to two-thirds of the Core currency, depending on the goods being bought or sold and the world where the exchange was taking place. The Central World banks had tried to drive the platinum out of use by steadily devaluating it on exchange, which had just caused people on the Rim to quit taking their change in credits when they paid platinum for something. And, of course, it had firmly established the platinum as the preferred currency for black-market and other criminal transactions, even in the inner worlds. Badger hoarding his platinum could only mean that he had something big on.

"One more item, before I leave." The police chief sipped his coffee. "I've been asked to convey a purchase offer for your servant girl."

"Is that right?" Badger frowned behind his cup. "Who is the interested party?"

"The gentleman wishes to remain anonymous. Would you care to hear the sum?"

"I think not. I'm sure the offer is right generous, but I have more invested in this servant than money." A few sips and innocuous remarks later, he added, "Out with it, old friend. What do you want to say?"

"Only since you ask. Is she really your brother's wife?"

Badger nodded. "I wouldn't want that to spread, but yes."

"I won't repeat it. But the rumor is already in the wind. That and her looks engender much speculation."

_Besides the obvious conjectures? That I'm using his absence and her collar to take advantage, keeping her warm for him? _"I presume the gentleman who placed the bid for her would like to… satisfy his curiosity."

"I couldn't say." Hoya held out his cup for a third refill. Badger raised his eyebrows; the police chief seldom lingered so long before the press of his affairs brought him to his feet. "But if I thought you bought her to exact some sort of penalty, I would urge you to take the offer. For your own sake."

"Me own sake?"

"Revenge is unlike you. Best you get her out of your house, I would have said, before that… ignoble sentiment claims you."

"You're fishing, old friend."

"No, Eaton. Unlike the whispering fools in the market, I know that she was a stone in your shoe for years. If you were another man, I would feel certain you'd find the offer amusing – and tempting. But I think I know the shape of your soul." He sipped. "I've seen her going about your business this past week since you've started letting her out of the house. So have many others. The interest is easily understood. But I also know her circumstances when you took her freedom. Whatever motive led you to collar her, it wasn't lust – or resentment. I agreed to convey the offer, but I was sure you wouldn't accept." He stood. "You once told me you didn't think you could deal with an indenture fairly. It's the only time I've heard you misjudge a man."

-0-

"Badger." Howard appeared from the side entrance to Badger's lair, with Buster in tow. Both men looked worried. "That item you asked about. I've found somebody who'll take the order. Says he's got something even better, actually."

"Is that right? Better how?"

He says that the stuff you asked for is what people use when they can't get this."

"Well." Badger thought a moment. "Right. If you think he's on the up, close the deal. How soon?"

"Says he can have it in your hands in a week or ten days. But the _price_."

"He knows who he's dealing with?"

"Sure. Otherwise he'd have quoted double. It's still going to empty the safe."

"We'll fill it again soon enough. Offer him a quarter less. Tell him half down, half on delivery. In platinum."

"Who are you going to _sell_ it to? Special order, right?"

Badger smiled wide. "Very special."

-0-

Lady Binh entered Badger's office unescorted. Besides Badger, only Mokey and Darcy were present to witness the coming transaction; he'd sent all the others away. She smiled at Darcy, but the girl didn't curtsey or even return the smile. She hesitated, possibly expecting Badger to leave his desk to greet her, but he stayed in his seat, and she moved forward again, a bit more uneasy. "I expected your summons days sooner, good Badger. I was beginning to worry."

"There were complications. But they're all ironed out."

From inside her cloak, she produced a small, tightly-wrapped package and placed it on Badger's desk. Not very large for a collection of personal, he noted, but large enough for a fortune in credit notes. She said, "How long will it take to reach him?"

"The money's gone as far as it's going." Badger placed his hands on the desk, on either side of the package. "You were a bit less than truthful with me, milady. You didn't need someone to find this man. You knew exactly where he was, because he told you where to send the goods. Didn't he?"

"You… you're not sending it on? But…"

"He's not your son. I know exactly what he is to you."

She stilled. "Please," she said, almost in a whisper. "If he doesn't…"

"You're not his first. He's seduced and blackmailed three others just like you in the past seven years, on three worlds – young society ladies trapped in arranged marriages to rotters like your old man. He does his homework, scouts careful, reels em in slow. Bet you knew him half a year before he led you into anything worth putting on a capture. But he got plenty on you before he dropped the mask, didn't he?" He laid a hand on the package. "This wouldn't have been the end of it, just the start. Once he had you paying, you'd be in even deeper. He'd have kept pressing till you got caught. Or till he milked you dry; then he'd have gone to your husband for one last payment." He patted the parcel. "So, y'see, there's really no point giving him the first copper."

Her voice rose, tinged with panic. "Do you know what will happen …"

"For spitting on the bed of the man your family married you to?" He leaned back. "Let's see if I've got it right." He glanced past the woman to Darcy. His sister-in-law stood still as a statue, not meeting his eyes, her thoughts seeming turned inward and not on the little scene unfolding in front of her. "Straightaway he finds out, his Lordship will have you put out the gate in the clothes you're wearing – or starkers, if he catches you in the bath – and you'll be divorced and penniless by next day noon. Proud hundan as he is, he'll prolly sell or fire the staff, 'cause he'll never believe they didn't know. And nobody, not family or closest friends, will talk to you or even speak your name ever again. Have I got it?"

The woman's face was ashen, and her eyes large and stricken. He met her shocky gaze, then looked very deliberately past her once again. "Bout as bad as turning your back on your family's choice and marrying some new-rich from the wrong side o' the tracks, some wang bao dahn who ends up in prison for stealing from his clients – friends and family, people you introduced him to."

The woman turned to look at Darcy with a different sort of horror. "D'arcy Etienne?"

"Eaton," she corrected with almost unearthly composure. "My husband is in prison, milady, not dead."

Badger inserted an apple into his peeler. "How bout it, Darcy? Care to tell Her Ladyship what it's like when your class turns on you?" He turned the crank slowly, as if raising the blade on a guillotine.

She was still a moment, then spoke, quietly. "Trapped. Horribly trapped. That never goes away, really, just… mutates, as your circumstances change. You make a fool of yourself at first – accosting friends and relatives on the street until you're dragged away, standing at the front gate of your family's house screaming at the top of your lungs because no one will answer the call button. It doesn't really sink in for the first week or so, until after the first twenty or thirty rejections, but then you realize you're alone for the first time in your life, and you begin to think of suicide. Then a seeming miracle happens.

"You're contacted by someone you know – not someone close, someone on the edge of your social circle, the son of a friend of your mother, perhaps, or the husband of a cousin. It will be a man, though, always. Someone not closely watched who can get in touch with you without arousing suspicion, if he's careful. And he'll be _very_ careful."

Badger stopped peeling his apple.

"You arrange to meet regularly. You chat and gossip about your former world. Being with him makes you feel almost normal again, as if what's happened to you is just some sort of temporary mass insanity. He'll listen to your tales of woe, and express concern for your plight. He'll offer small courtesies and gifts: buy you a meal or a few nights' lodging, always apologetic that he can't offer more. He'll promise to do whatever he can for you. But you never get cash from him, or anything you can sell, because cash is potential freedom.

"At first, you're so desperate for acceptance that you take his behavior for sympathy, and you make extravagant promises of repayment. Before long, though, your Companion training asserts itself, and you realize what lies behind his generosity. But by then, your eyes have been opened to other unpleasant truths, such as how few options are open to you – a woman alone with no job skills, and a few years of Companion school the only item worth putting on a resume. You know your shunning isn't going to pass. His goodwill is all that keeps you from starving, and now you both know it. You review your promises in light of your new knowledge, and feel a chill that reaches your very bones.

"He'll turn parsimonious with his gifts, gauging your desperation. His voice becomes less warm and honeyed, and he has less patience for your problems. His little remarks about repayment don't sound like jokes anymore; they become increasingly demanding until they sound like ultimatums. And you both know you have only one thing to pay him with.

"He'll break you in gently. The first time will be at a hunting cabin or writer's cottage, someplace out-of-the-way where he can go alone for a day or two without raising eyebrows, and you both can arrive and leave unnoticed. He'll be sympathetic once again, determined to make you comfortable – and cooperative. He'll probably provide something to make it easier for you, wine or a mild smoother - nothing to dull your senses; he wants his money's worth, after all. You'll lock yourself in the bathroom afterwards, or go for a walk alone, because you can't help crying, but you don't want him to see; you'll still have that much pride. But it won't last. Before he completely tires of you, you'll be dropping to your knees for him in cloakrooms.

"And tire of you he will, once the sex palls and the dirty little thrill of degrading you fades and he begins to think more of the risks. Before he stops seeing you, though, he'll introduce you to certain acquaintances: men well beneath your former station but well-off, who look at you with appreciation and pay you compliments. It doesn't take you long to realize you're being offered a client base as a parting gift. You set your disgust aside and bring your charm to the forefront and make your arrangements."

Lady Binh opened her mouth as if to speak, but Darcy stepped towards her, and her mouth closed. "Soon after you're handling money again, and attending 'parties' with other prostitutes and their clients, you'll turn to drugs. They'll make your life more bearable but less manageable, as yet another man acquires a means of bending you to his will – your dealer. And drugs take a physical and mental toll that leaches away your stock-in-trade and pushes the affluence of your client base ever downward, until you're trading your services for table scraps and a corner to sleep in. And drugs, of course. You'll end up on drops, because by this time they'll be the only drug available to you. Even when you can't get anything to eat but butcher's trimmings from the offal bins, your dealer will give you drops on credit – enough, at least, to stave off withdrawal. If you ever had a lucid moment by this time, you might wonder about that. But you don't, and you don't.

"After a while – not very long – he and his associates begin pressing you for payment. They're not nearly as gentle about it as your first client, and your debt is greater – it doesn't take long to accumulate a huge debt buying drops, especially since the dealers keep the accounts. At the same time, your prospects for paying him are zero. You no longer have any services worth buying – men scarcely spare you a glance, and many look away at your approach. You have only one asset left, one that even an indenture can't be forced to give up. Sit, milady, before you fall down." Darcy took the shivering woman's arm and guided her to the sofa.

"Please." The lady looked from Darcy to Badger with haunted dewy eyes. "Why are you saying these things? Why are you doing this? I, I …"

Darcy stood in front of her, still speaking in her cool, detached voice. "Do you know that most transplant tissue is harvested from living donors? Not heart or liver, of course, but all the non-vitals like skin, bone marrow, kidneys, even lungs and eyes. A very few are directed donations – a man giving his brother a kidney, something like that. But most are sold by people in money trouble with no other way to lay hands on large amounts of cash.

"And that's why the drop dealers will keep you supplied with a trickle of product. Drops are powerfully addictive, and they make a mess of your intellect and ruin your looks, but they don't damage your vitals. Drop addicts have been known to live a very long time – unable to feed themselves, but in perfect health. And if your dealer is careful managing your supply, he can keep you firmly hooked while leaving you enough of your wits to sign a consent form."

She pulled her shirt up to her ribs. Badger couldn't see anything but the bare skin of her lower back and the line of her spine, but the woman stared at Darcy's abdomen and gasped. "Their doctors don't worry overmuch about leaving scars, as you can see. They start in places that don't show, and progress to more obvious harvests as they go. Then they start cutting back on your supply, just to give you a taste of withdrawals, which you'll come to fear more than death. Believe me, you'll never be hungry enough to sell an eye, but there will come a time you'll sign a blanket release for your next drop." She dropped her shirt. "Finally, they'll tire of keeping you alive, and finish with you. You'll disappear. The last of you will be black-market organs headed for some clinic where they don't ask questions."

"Please." The woman looked to Badger, shivering. "By whomever you pray to, I beg you…"

Darcy touched her collar. "This is all that saved me from that fate. Badger bought me, paying ten times what I was worth to clear my debts, and kept me a prisoner until I recovered and got my wits back. He gave me back my life." She stroked the circle of metal. "For me, this wasn't slavery. It was freedom."

Looking completely lost, Lady Binh looked back at Badger with eyes that were afraid to hope. She glanced at the package before searching his face again. In a tiny voice, she said, "What are you going to do?"

"It's already done," Badger said. "I arranged to have him given a talking to. The people I hired are expensive, but discreet and experienced. He won't trouble you again." As her face blanked in horror, he added, "Wo de ma, not _that_. His sort has a healthy respect for credible threats; it's why they pick blackmail for a trade, after all. The captures and notes have been turned over and destroyed. And, while they were convincing him to give you up, they uglied him up a bit. I doubt he'll be charming any more well-bred ladies."

He patted the package again. "This is my payment. A bit more than you expected, pretty words or no, but my involvement and expenses were higher than expected as well. You were already going to part with this to be shut of him forever, so you've got my services for free, in a manner." He stood and circled the desk to stand before her. In Mandarin, he said, "Go home, my lady. If living with your lord chafes you so much, divorce him, soon, and tell your family to choose between you. For now, light a stick of incense at the family shrine and give thanks for your narrow escape, for it truly was good fortune which brought you to my door. And pray that we never have occasion to meet again."

Badger left with the shaken woman to see her to his door. Alone in the office with Darcy, Mokey said, "I've still got my eye on you."

"I hope you mean that," she said. "I could use the help."

Badger returned to his office, looking entirely pleased with himself, to find Darcy waiting. "What?"

"Did you really let him go?"

He shrugged. "I left that to the people I hired. If they think he'll stay convinced …"

She shook her head. "He wouldn't. He's gotten too used to winning. Besides, his type enjoys the betrayal more than the seduction. He wouldn't be able to help himself."

"If that's so – and I'm not saying yea or nay – My people would know. Which means he'll appear to have taken his licks and run off, and no evidence of him will ever turn up. He won't trouble her again, I say. Let's just hope she can keep her knickers on till she's divorced, eh?"

"Don't try to disguise what you did with a crudity. You were gallant, and wonderful."

"Was, wasn't I?" His little smile faded. "When I said, 'tell her what it's like,' I wasn't expecting all that."

"You wanted to make sure she wouldn't protest your price, to convince her she was getting off cheap. And to make her cautious, because she's entirely too trusting for a woman in her position."

"So I did." He gestured to her, a lifting motion. "Up with your shirt."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Get off it. You know what I want to see."

She lifted the hem of her shirt, exposing her belly. Low on the right side was a small but ugly scar, a thin dark line flanked by tiny stitch marks. He touched it, feeling the faint crease. "This," he said, "is a very old scar."

"Emergency appendectomy when I was ten. Not our family doctor, of course; he never would have been so clumsy." She dropped her shirt. "But a very convincing touch, don't you think?"

"Penny for the smart girl. How much of the rest was truth?"

She looked away. "All but the last. You know they weren't going to take me a bit at a time."

Badger's face stiffened into a look that had made men twice his size lower their voices and step back, a look that made everyone in the room swallow. "I know who your dealer was, o' course. But your helpful friend, the one who started you off. He have a name?"

Darcy blanched, but held his eyes. "The judge who sentenced you. Does he?"

The tension broke. He smiled at her. "You're learning."

-0-

Wash was sitting at ease in the lounge outside the infirmary. Zoë was out of the ship with Captain Sir on some errand, and he was left to amuse himself. He'd gotten the lumpy old chair arranged just right, and had put his feet up, and was about to settle in with a book when Inara appeared at the hatch leading to the hold. She called down, "Wash, are you keeping up with news from home?"

By 'home,' he presumed she meant New Pittsburgh, the world of his birth and the abode of his scant family. "Not really. More trouble at the Foundries?" He set his book aside; her question didn't seem idle, and he doubted she'd just nod and turn away.

"Yes. I thought you might have family there." She descended the steps to the lower deck and the lounge and perched on the couch against the wall next to him, tugging her sari up a little to keep it from wrinkling. "It's all over the Cortex. I've been scanning it for an hour, I couldn't tear myself away. Foundry One is under martial law, and some of the others may be soon. A dozen leaders on both sides of the conflict were found dead last night. Several others are missing, presumably out the airlocks. The Navy is searching the vicinity, but they don't have much hope."

He shrugged. "The way things kept getting worse, it was bound to happen."

"Not like this. The bodies were all found together. A meeting."

"Ai ya. They all shot each other in the middle of working out a settlement? I think somebody should have checked for guns at the door."

"No." She gave a little head shrug. "They were executed. And not all of them were shot. Two were strangled, the top men on each side. And on several bodies, there was evidence of torture."

He put his feet down. "By who, if both sides got whacked?"

"If the evidence the killers left behind is real, everyone in that room was on the same side. Apparently there was a conspiracy between some of the top management and labor representatives, almost from the beginning of the unrest."

"Wait. I thought things at Foundry One were ready to explode. How can the guys stirring everything up be holding hands?"

"Stirring things up was part of the conspiracy. The labor leaders were being paid to inflame the workers and incite violence. The meeting was to pay the _agents provocateur_ and plan the last phase of the operation: a worker riot that would get a number of civilians killed and bring the Alliance in on the side of management. The district judge who would have heard the case is also missing, and it's presumed he was in on the plot. Captures and other recordings give evidence that the plan was to convict the striking workers of a number of Federal charges and have them sentenced to a period of indenture." She looked away. "The company would have bought their contracts, of course. That would have solved management's skilled-indenture problem nicely, wouldn't it?"

Wash brushed back his hair. "I'll say. Why bother finding trained slaves when you can make the guys already on the job work for free?"

"It's going to be a huge scandal. Some of the other stations are rushing into agreements with the laborers - before the investigation spreads, one assumes. There's even talk of amending the Articles of Indenture."

"Long overdue." Shepherd Book appeared at the head of the corridor leading to the passenger dorms with a Bible in one hand. "The slave trade is a nasty business. One can hope this tragedy leads to legislation that makes it less profitable." He approached the pair. "Any word on who did it?"

"Only guesses." Inara slid a hand's width along the couch in invitation, and the preacher sat. Wash couldn't help noticing that she could have moved over a whole lot further, and that there was more space on either end of the couch than between them. "It doesn't seem likely the workers found out – the plotters seem to have been under surveillance for some time. And the killings seem too professional. A group of mercenaries led by a man named Bien arrived a few days ago, hired by the Corporation for 'security'. They're being held, but I gather just for lack of better suspects." She turned her head away, towards Wash, but her eyes weren't focused on him. "Whoever these avenging angels are, they've left no identity traces."

The Shepherd sat in a casual pose, but he was still as a hunter in a blind. "Ah. Well, these things happen from time to time."

"Every few years," she agreed. "The last time was just after the end of the War, as I recall."

"The Transport Unlimited business."

She raised a sculpted eyebrow. "No. I thought the Trans-U case was open-and-shut. A murder-suicide between the owners when they thought they'd been found out."

"Yes, that's right. I must have been thinking of something else."

Inara's lashes drifted toward her cheeks. "Yes, I'm sure." But neither of them took it any further.

Wash was feeling a little left out of the conversation, but something told him he was learning more by keeping quiet. He watched the Shepherd open his Bible to a spot he'd been keeping with a finger between the pages and put a little ribbon in its place. Wash wasn't a Bible expert, but it looked as if the Shepherd had been reading in the Old Testament, the part with the hard demanding God who fought wars through human surrogates and spent His time smiting people, rather than the do-unto-others part. "Well," the old man said, "I'll remember them in my prayers tonight."

Hob Washburn thought that statement a _little_ ambiguous.


	7. Overdue Accounts

"Bert," Bernard Eaton said to his brother between bites, "you haven't been this full of false cheer since I first went in. You have something you want to tell me?"

Bertram Eaton looked across the low table at the handsome young man no one would have taken for his brother. Mum had often told Bertie that he resembled his father, and a few treasured captures she'd kept bore that out. Bernie, on the other hand, had their mother's beauty. It had been another asset the young man had taken for granted, going through girls at school like a scythe through wheat – until he'd met D'arcy Etienne.

Bertram kept the smile on his face. "Just glad to see you, sport." _And I'm wondering why you insisted on seeing me before your wife this month._ The message, delivered by his mother as she'd rejoined them at the shelter outside the prison, had raised Bertram's curiosity and made him a little wary. "I missed you last month. Enjoying your lunch?"

"Are you joking?" The younger man said around a chunk of vending-machine spring roll. Standard prison fare seemed to be intended as part of the punishment, or else it was a clever way to get the prisoners' families to help pay for their upkeep. The food provided was bland and substandard, the portions meant to maintain the prisoners at minimum actuarial weight – if they ate everything, including the condiment packets, and didn't exercise much. For a man who wanted to walk out of prison fit and strong, it was a starvation diet. No doubt keeping the inmates on the listless edge of malnutrition made them easier to guard.

But registered family members could send monthly food packages – in limited quantities, through approved vendors – that were rather better than standard fare. And the visiting room for nonviolent prisoners had vending machines that dispensed food better still, at a hideous markup. Anything purchased there had to be consumed there, and every prisoner in the room was stuffing himself like a Christmas goose while his family watched with pinched smiles.

Bertram watched his brother straighten up from his recyclable plate and take a breath. "Whew."

"Something else?" Bernard's cheeks were still too prominent, and the eyes sunken, Bertram thought. He wondered if all the monthly package was reaching his brother, and how much of it the lad was keeping. He resolved to check it out through his inmate contacts straightaway. "There's chicken and dog in the cooler."

"Chicken, please. And noodles."

Bertram raised his meal-credit card to attract one of the trusties circling the room. "Chicken and noodles," he said to the man in a low voice. "And whatever you like." He knew the addition would be small. The trusties were forbidden to eat on duty, but they weren't searched as thoroughly as the regular inmates when they returned to the compound, and should be able to secrete some morsel for later. Badger's small act of generosity, far less costly than a restaurant tip, guaranteed proper service every time Bernard showed up in the visiting room.

"So," Bernard said, his eyes on the trusty as he fed the card into the slot. "Mum tells me Darcy's working for you now."

"Did she?" Bertram stirred. "Just some odd jobs, really."

"Perhaps you're thinking she can join the Eaton family business, gei gei? An apprenticeship in criminal enterprise?"

"Here now," Bertram said. "If you don't approve, I won't take it another step. But she needs to work, and the only other thing she's good at-"

"I know what she's good at," his brother said roughly.

Bertram stiffened. "I was going to say," he said carefully, "That she's got good at housecleaning. But I'd rather not find her a job as a domestic if I can find her something nearer home."

"Sorry," Bernard said. "Bertie, I've been hearing stories."

_So soon?_ "Pfft. You're listening to gaolhouse gossip now?"

"Bert, I mean I've been hearing stories for two years. I didn't say anything to you before because…" He gave a head shrug. "I should never have put it on you, brother. Asking you to do what I couldn't, even when I was a free man. I didn't hear from her that whole time, and you didn't talk about her. I know she hasn't been living with you and Mum till lately. I've been in fights with men who claimed they'd…"

There was nothing between them but the table; only the injunction against direct physical contact, and the eyes watching them from the guard station, kept Bertram from reaching for his brother. "And risked adding time to your sentence? Over that sort of niou se? You didn't change any minds or stop the stories, I'll warrant. And if you believed it, why'd you take her back?"

"It doesn't matter. I mean, it does, but it doesn't change how I feel about her. I love her no matter what. But… you must know what she was doing. I need the whole truth, Bert. I think she'd tell me if I asked, but I also think it would break her. So you tell me, Bert. For both our sakes."

"And that's the way of it," Bertram said an hour later. "I thought she'd gone on her back because she was on drops, not the other way round. I let you down, Bernie. Me and me gorram pride."

Bernard sat silent, eyes staring unfocused at the untouched meal before him. "Niles. It had to be. That qing wa cao de liu mang…" His hands on the table balled into fists.

"Easy, there."

"He had his eye on her since before we were married. I'm going to kill him, Bert. I really am."

"You are not. You'd never hurt a fly. You're just having a bad mo, that's all." He deliberately cast his eyes toward the ceiling, then to the guard station. "We are _not_ talking about this right now. She put it behind. So can you, boyo." He stood. "She's turning in circles out there, likely. Can you keep your wits about?"

"Yes." Bernard's fists opened, clenched again, and relaxed. "Thank you, Bert. For everything you've done, for me and her. I won't throw your hard work away again." He glanced at the clock and stood.

Bertram searched his brother's face. "Going to talk to her about it?"

"If she brings it up. Otherwise no. We have plenty else to talk about."

Bertram nodded, and they embraced briefly, the only physical contact permitted during the entire visit. Into his ear, Bernard said, "Don't take the collar off her anymore, Bert. I know now. And it's risky for both of you."

Bertram made no answer. "See you in a month, little brother."

Outside, Darcy and his mother were waiting. His sister-in-law's eyes were full of apprehension; his mother's serious and watchful. He smiled at them both. "Off you go, Darcy. I'll be waiting when you come out. Just let me walk you to the door." Halfway down the walk, he said to her in a low voice, "He knows."

Her step faltered. "Bertram?"

"Yes, I told. But he knew the worst of it before I first brought you. Think on that before you speak to him about it. Meantime, take hold of your collar." He reached into his pocket for the fob. Bernie would never see his wife in a slave's band if his brother had a say.

-0-

Just before she retired for the evening, Darcy noticed a light showing under the door of Bertram's study. Since it was long past the man of the house's usual bedtime, she was sure he'd simply left it on. So as she stepped in to turn it off, she was surprised to see him sitting at his desk. Her surprise redoubled when she saw the glass and almost-empty wine bottle in front of him, and the slightly blurry look he gave her. "'Lo, Darcy. What time is it?"

"I'm not sure. Late. Is something wrong?"

"What?" He looked down at the glass and wrapped a hand around it. "No. I just take a little nip now and again." He offered her a crooked grin. "Sometimes I get melancholy." He took a swallow and set the glass back down again. "There was a time I thought I was gonna change the world, you b'lieve that? Knock the crooked judges off their high seats, make the politicians scared to lie or steal." He scoffed. "Now I offer em bribes meself. We pr'tend to respect each other while we make each other rich."

She moved closer. "You've been working very hard, Bertram. You're tired. You should go to bed." She caught herself. "Not that it's my place to say."

He smiled and shook his head. "Sit with me a bit."

She sat on the chair in front of the desk, watching him. Though she remained outwardly calm, she was deeply worried. She'd never imagined this brash, confident and ofttimes abrasive man could ever be dissatisfied with his life. And the look he was giving her tightened her breathing. _Could he be thinking…_

"'Gallant and wonderful', eh?" Bertram stared at his desktop. "I envied my brother more than a little, first time I laid eyes on you." He touched a fingertip to the rim of his glass and circled it. "Would've envied him more if you hadn't turned out to be such a stuck-up little bitch. Been thinking praps that's why I didn't watch you so close after Bernie went in. Maybe I wanted to see you come down a peg or two."

"And perhaps you knew my conceit wouldn't have let me take your help until I was too desperate for pride." She resisted the impulse to reach across the desk to him, and kept her hands folded in her lap. "You leveled my debts twice, and I never knew. I thought whoring was paying the bills, at least." She shook her head. "I'm hopeless about money."

He pushed the glass away. "Well, you got a husband with a head for figures. Just listen to him when he tells you you can't afford something. You'll do all right." He rose and stumbled. "Wai."

She stood quickly and circled the desk. She got his arm over her shoulder and walked him out the study door. At the hall, he shrugged and tried to take his arm back. "M'not a drunkard, woman, I can walk."

"Of course you can." She tightened her grip.

-0-

Doris Eaton, always a light sleeper, was wakened by some small sounds outside her bedroom, possibly from Bertram's room across the hall. She rose, threw on a wrap and opened her door, just in time to see Darcy coming out of her son's bedroom in the dead of night.

Darcy saw her and stopped short, eyes wide. "It isn't what you're thinking."

"You don't know what I'm thinking." But Doris examined the girl carefully, applying an eye she'd acquired from years as a woman, both amateur and professional, to her observations of Darcy's hair and clothing, eyes and hands, posture and scent. She came to two conclusions: first, that, whatever reason her daughter-in-law had had for being in her other son's bedroom, it hadn't been tupping; second, that she'd been caught thinking about it nonetheless.

Doris had been watching Darcy carefully for some time now, looking for signs of such. It was only natural, she'd thought. D'Arcy Etienne had been raised dependent on men, and groomed all her life to fulfill her destiny as a rich man's prize. On her wedding day, she'd been passed smoothly from her father's hand to her husband's in an elaborate ceremony akin to the changing of the guard at the Governor's Palace. After Bernard had gone to prison, her desperate need to regain her accustomed life had led her to trust the first man who'd offered her support, sympathy and solace, and her quick dependence on him had nearly destroyed her. Now she was back under a man's roof again, legally and physically bound to Bertram, who'd taken charge of her more firmly than any male she'd ever known. And Bertram Eaton, deny it as he might, was a rescuer by nature. Affection was a natural development between them, Doris thought, collar or no. But Doris Eaton was determined to see that things follow a proper course, and Darcy returned to her husband without further shame or secrets. "Is he all right?"

"He had a little too much to drink. I helped him to bed."

"Did you undress him?"

Darcy colored, and Doris knew her guesses had been on the mark. "Just his slippers and shirt. I'll change the sheets in the morning."

Doris nodded. "Best you get to bed, child." She stood at the doorway and watched Darcy enter her room. Then she stood there for several minutes more. But the girl's door didn't open again, and presently the light under the door went out. She let out a little breath and returned to her room.

-0-

Simon Tam, sitting alone in his infirmary, bent over the little workspace and picked up a pen, prepared to make a fresh entry in his notebook. It wasn't a formal treatment record, more like a series of personal notes, but they sometimes organized his thoughts better than the pages of dry prose he kept on the infirmary's keyboard viewer.

He read through the entries he'd made since he'd brought home that case of meds from Badger's shop with his heart whirring like Kaylee's beloved engine going into hard burn.

_1__st__ dose, Thoradol 50cc: initial fully lucid period, duration 6 days; relapse to base condition. Lasting effect, none._

_2__nd__ dose, Amyloctin-C 65cc: initial period of violent schizophrenia, duration 5 days, followed by improved lucidity accompanied by extremely heightened selective empathy. Effect persists to lesser degree beyond metabolization of dose._

_3__rd__ dose, Tavin 100cc: no effect._

_4__th__ dose, Rygelin AS 15cc: catatonia, duration 6 weeks. Lasting effect, none._

He put down the pen without writing anything. That last dose had been very bad. Almost as soon as the plunger had run home, her face had smoothed to a blank staring mask, and he'd thought at first he'd killed her. He'd spent six weeks feeding and cleaning up after her, dressing her, bathing her. He'd talked to her and led her around the ship in desperate hope she was still in touch with her senses, and that her formidable intellect was still trapped inside her skull and not extinguished. As the days to the metabolic deadline had ticked away, he'd endured the pitying looks of the women, offered to him and River both; they were even worse than the troubled what-do-we-do glances of the Captain and the Shepherd. Worst by far, though, had been Jayne's grim waiting expression, directed solely at Simon, a look that had gotten harder and more distant as the deadline approached. Simon had recognized it, of course: it was the look of a man preparing to keep a promise he'd rather cut himself up than do, like perhaps smother a pretty young girl with a pillow rather than let her spend the next fifty years as a burden to her family. Simon had taken to sleeping in his sister's room.

Three days ago, at the end of the six-week period, he'd wakened to find her bed empty.

He'd rushed to the other passenger annex, but the Shepherd wasn't in his cabin. He'd hurried to the hold, bare feet slapping on the flooring, but there was no activity at the airlocks of the orbiting vessel. He'd scrambled up the stairs to the galley and found her cooking breakfast for the silently waiting crew. "River?"

She'd turned to him, and something in the look she gave him told him she was channeling again, but he didn't recognize either Kaylee or Inara in her manner. "Morning, Doctor." She'd eyed him, dressed only in his pajama bottoms, with a woman's appreciation. "Best get dressed before it's gone, and before poor Kaylee busts from frustration." Then she'd turned her regard to Wash, sitting at the table, and smiled strangely; the man had fidgeted and glanced at his stone-faced wife, and Simon had known whose 'chaos filters' his sister was borrowing this morning. "Lord knows I'm not used to cooking, but this feels like a special occasion. I thought I'd give everybody a chance to see what they've been missing, lettin Zoe skip her turn at kitchen duty."

Jayne had eaten his share and Simon's both.

Later that day, she'd asked him to prepare the next dose. He'd exploded, ranting at her in four languages – two of them dead – and spluttered to a stop with, "Are you _crazy_?"

She'd offered him a cool Zoe smile. "We already hashed this out, Simon. Everything I said two doses ago is still true. I want my cure. Period."

Simon picked up the pen again and wrote.

_5__th __dose, polyscorpamine 75cc: no initial effect._

_If there's to be a change, _he thought, _let it be soon. Six weeks of waiting is enough to make anyone insane._

"Simon?" Kaylee appeared at the infirmary door. "Have you seen River?"

He closed the notebook. "Not since supper." He looked up at the wall clock, which he'd reset to Persephone local time when they'd landed yesterday morning. It marked a twenty-three hour day now, and the display read twenty-one ten, two hours past sunset. "Have you looked in Shuttle One?"

"I've looked every place I know. And I can't be sure, but I think the man-door's been opened and shut since supper. And everybody else is aboard."

Simon's spine turned to ice. River wandering alone through Eavesdown after dark would have been a terrifying prospect even if she didn't have a king's ransom on her head.

Kaylee pressed the intercom button. "Anybody knows where the cap'n is, have him call sickbay, quick."

-0-

After dinner, Badger was at the desk in his study, examining the previous week's bulletins with unusual care. He'd picked up some interesting bits through his own contacts, and wanted to compare them to official news.

The story of Adelai Niska's ballsy theft of the antique laser pistol was finally off the front page, now that the old rotter was convicted and in jail, but it was still being talked to death in the back sections and the 'pages of opinion' – propaganda pieces by Alliance lapdogs, usually. Of particular interest to Badger was the evidence trail linking the old boy to the artifact. Turned out the cautious old gangster, who normally worked his thefts through numerous intermediaries and never touched the goods he stole, had been caught almost with the Lassiter in his hands. The Feds had been tipped off by a responsible official of the shipping company, one of the oldest and most respected in the 'Verse, that had delivered it to Niska's skyplex warehouse. Lawmen had stormed into the storage space just as Niska's men were opening the shipping crate for him. He'd sworn he had no idea why it had been delivered to him, or even what was in the crate before he'd opened it, but his signature was all over the shipping manifests, and the circuitous route he'd ordered had smelled of suspicious cargo to the shipping agent, prompting the call to the Federal Police.

But Badger knew a thing or two that had never made the papers. He knew that said shipping company had negotiated some very favorable business arrangements out this way shortly before, the kind of deals closed by bigwigs, not lawyers. He knew that the company's majority stockholder, general manager, and hired gun for such deals was an Osiris aristocrat by the name of Gabriel Tam. Badger had heard, along with half the 'Verse, about _Serenity's_ little adventure at Halifax Station at about the same time, and had heard whispers about the organ heist they'd been suspected of; it had Niska's smell all over it. Neither the organs nor the hijackers had ever been found, but just after the elder Tam had returned home, Niska had been caught – or set up, much more effectively than the tramp ship's crew had been.

And then there had been the things he'd learned from his old friend, Albert Sessions.

It had been months before, just a few weeks after he'd slid the case of drugs into Simon Tam's hands, in fact; odd though the meet had been, Badger hadn't thought much of it till later. He'd been in his Eavesdown office, deep into planning a new caper with Buster, when a familiar voice at the door had said, "Hey, Bert." He'd turned toward the entrance and seen Sessions standing crookedly behind Mokey's outstretched rifle.

Badger had gestured impatiently. Mokey, surprised, had lifted his rifle; although the big black had been in Badger's service for three years, he was too new to have recognized the man at the door. Badger had rounded the desk, leaving Buster to follow. "Mokey. Do up some coffee. Never mind the door." Instead of offering a hand, he'd gestured to the couch. "Have a seat, old man. Before that leg gives out on you."

Sessions had eased onto the cushions and unselfconsciously put one boot up on the coffee table, then begun rubbing the thigh. "Thankee."

Badger had sat opposite in his usual chair, Buster standing near at hand. "Long time, Albert."

"Too long. Seems every time I'm out this way, I'm in a hurry."

"You're looking well. Still working for the same people?"

"Not as often. Found a client who pays better, and his jobs don't trouble my sleep as much."

Badger had nodded, thinking, _and is this new client the reason you finally found time to see me?_ "Your mates still with you, then?"

"Two of them. Dickie and Deke. The others have drifted off or settled down. Or got themselves killed. What about you, old sport? Haven't gotten married or anything, have you?"

"Not likely. My life's already got all the women in it I can handle."

"Your Ma. She doing well?"

"Looking younger than when you saw her last."

Sessions had smiled. "Give her my regards."

Coffee had arrived. Mokey had served, then resumed his spot at the door, his attention less on people who might wish to enter than on those already in it.

Badger had taken a sip. "So, what brings you to the Docks?"

"A little bit of make-work between real jobs. Just some nosing around for a casual client, very small-time." Which had told Badger that Sessions was looking for something big, but on the quiet, with quick results taking a back seat to secrecy. "A lost item. Not valuable, but unusual, and of great sentimental value to my client. I've visited the pawnshops hereabouts, but I'm sure you know a few local dealers who don't have storefronts."

And _that_ had told Badger that the item was stolen and difficult to fence, either because it was unusual, very big-ticket, or had belonged to someone with a very nasty rep. Possibly a combination of the three. Badger had thought of the gan ni niangs Sessions sometimes took orders from; he had wondered who'd had the stones to steal from them, and what they'd lost. "I know a few people. Hobbyists, really, not businessmen, but they might be able to help you."

They'd sipped and chatted for half an hour more, while Badger waited for Sessions to come to the real purpose of his visit. The man had begun a friendly goodbye, and stirred as if to leave. Then he'd sat back down and said, "Almost forgot. While I'm here." From a pocket, he'd produced a capture of a young man, apparently in a warehouse, talking to someone out of the capture's field of view: Simon Tam. "I've been asked to get in touch with this young fellow. I know he was at Eavesdown about a year and a half ago. He was traveling alone at the time, but he might be with a young girl now. Recognize him?"

Badger had pretended to study the image for a moment, then handed it back. "You into bounty hunting now, Albert?"

"Bert." The man had looked aggrieved.

"Course I recognize him. Don't I see his picture every three months on the bulletins? That's Simon Tam. His sheet makes him out some kind of bloody criminal mastermind."

Sessions had given him a weary smile. "Nobody knows better than you what fei lao the 'official' judgment of a man can be."

"In this case, it'd be a fifty-thousand-credit misjudgment, and of one of the Core's own. What's your client's interest?" _Revenge? Or perhaps your client's real interest is in the girl?_

Sessions had put his poker face on. "Can't say. Not won't, can't. But he's no enemy of the young man, of that I feel sure. Mayhap Mr. Tam would be glad to hear from him."

_I'd like to take your word on that. But you've been misled before, haven't you, Albert? And it's been years since we last met. People change. _"Well, I have no business with him, and I've heard no mention of him out on the Docks. The 'Verse is a big place, Albert. A man on the run would have no reason to come here twice."

Bertram's grip on the news flimsy tightened, thinking back on that conversation. _I wonder who Albert was working for: Gabriel Tam or Niska? Looks like both of them found him on Serenity. _He studied the brief article about Niska. _Thirty years, eh? If it had been my kiddies that old barstid had tried to put in chains, I'd have done the same, or worse._

The door to his study swung open with a tiny creak. No one entered.

"Darcy?" Badger quietly opened a drawer and drew out a gun, keeping it under the desk. "Mum?"

River Tam stepped through the door, wearing a floor-length dress of some light and lacy material that made her look like a storybook princess. Her eyes were on him from the moment she entered the room, but she spoke no word.

He found his voice. "What are you doing here? How'd you get in? Who brought you? What do you want?" He realized he was chattering like a monkey, and closed his mouth, just drinking in the sight of her.

The dress swished on the floor as she stepped to the desk. "I'm alone. As for how I got in… I'm very good with locks."

"Ichi shen hushi. Can't believe they let you off the ship." Suspicion dawned. "They didn't. Did they?"

She rounded the desk, and he found himself on his feet. Her eyes were level with his forehead; he wondered if she was wearing shoes. "No one knows I'm gone yet. But I'm sure to be missed soon. The reaction will be seismic."

Badger felt a chill at the prospect. Not that he was worried about Reynolds' ire; curiously, he was more concerned with what the brother might think. "Then we'd best get you home straightaway. What the devil are you doing here?"

She shook her head. "No need for hurry. No one will think to look for me in your house."

"Too right. I don't believe you're really here, and I'm looking straight at you. I'll ask again. What do you want from me?"

"This isn't about what I want from you." She closed to within arm's length, never taking her eyes off his. "I've come to settle my bill."

"What? I-"

She placed her hands on his shoulders, and he was suddenly sure that she knew his heart's desire, and all his thoughts of her were laid bare. He choked out, "The goods. Did the trick, then?"

"They're not a cure, at least not yet. I have good days and bad. But the odds have tipped in my favor, I think. Thanks to you." She pursed her lips, her intent clear.

Unbidden, he bent his head and closed his eyes. He felt her lips touch his brow, soft as the petals of a rose, and move against his skin as she spoke. "I was lost in the woods before you led me to a path. Now I have hope, and a direction. Another damsel in distress saved, gentle knight. Your mother would be proud." Her breath was warm and sweet and made him ache with a beautiful sadness. Her lips withdrew, but her hands remained on his shoulders. He raised his head and opened his eyes. Her face was only a double handwidth away, studying him. "Paid in full?"

He swallowed, listening to his heartbeat, slow but hard as a big drum. "With interest, little girl."

"I'm taller than you are."

"Just the same." He took her hand and led her out of his study, towards the bedroom wing.

She read or guessed his intent. "You don't need to do this."

"I think I do." He pulled her gently down the hall to the bedrooms.

"I can get back to the ship by myself."

"Prolly so. But I need to know." He tapped on a door and called softly, "Darcy."

A moment later, the door opened, and Darcy appeared in a wrap. Her eyes widened at the girl in Bertram's grip.

"Not a thief," the girl said.

"Me best customer, in fact. Darcy, call a cab, get dressed, see this young lady home." He reached into his pocket for the fare and started to pass it to Darcy, but she folded her arms and flicked a glance at River, and he remembered. "Ah. Dratted nuisance. Wonder what it would cost to manumit you."

"No," both women said together. River went on, "She's not ready yet. She only hopes three years is enough."

Darcy gazed at him, then the girl. "You, too?"

"Not drops. But I owe him my chance at sanity, just like you." She gave Bertam a look that tightened his throat.

"Well." He handed the coins to River. "Be sure to put the return fare in for her, then. Darcy, drop her off just out of sight and come away. Don't let anyone see you. She'll be in enough trouble as is, I expect."

The girl smiled. "I'm going to tell my brother the _biggest_ lie."

-0-

Captain Malcolm Reynolds was not a happy man. Searching Eavesdown Dock in the dead of night for _Serenity's_ resident headcase hadn't been in his plan for the evening. And thoughts of all the different kinds of trouble she could be in tightened his gut and quickened his pace as he prowled the dim-lit streets and black alleys, looking for a sign.

The whole crew was on the search. Wash was on the bridge, where he could monitor the others by com as well as eavesdrop the official wave traffic – and take off like a jackrabbit as soon as they all boarded, if need be. Mal hadn't wanted to let Kaylee and Inara off the ship this time of night, but he'd known better than to order them to stay aboard, so he'd paired them off with Jayne and the Shepherd, putting them in safe hands. He'd put Simon with Zoe, and taken the fourth quarter of the search grid, the easiest, for himself.

He'd scoured the small, jumbled streets south and east of their landing point until they'd petered out into highways and cropland. Having covered his territory, he turned back towards the ship to cover it again. If no one reported finding her by the time he got back to the ship, he decided, he was going to have to take hat in hand and go ask Badger for a favor. The little weasel had contacts all over, and was friends with the bandit who ran security at the free port, he'd heard; Badger could find her, if Mal could concoct a story that kept him from turning her in as soon as he did.

Immersed in these unpleasant thoughts, he worked his way back to Soup Can Alley. He was walking a dark little space between two buildings, just an intersection or two from the ship, when he saw the white egg-shape of a city cab glide silently past the mouth of the alley, slowing.

Automated cabs were expensive, the preferred transport of respectable affluent folk, and a rarity outside the city proper; in Eavesdown, at this hour, it was instantly suspicious. He hurried to the mouth of the alley on cat's feet until he saw it stopped at the corner, just out of sight of the ship. From the darkness, he watched the gull-wing door on the near side rise, and his hand came off the revolver at his hip and reached for his com box when he recognized the occupant. "Wash," he said in a very low voice, "Tell everybody to come on home. River's back."

The crazy girl stepped out, and Mal saw she was wearing one of Inara's more modest getups, a dress that put him in mind of a bridal gown. She straightened and turned, bending a little to talk to another passenger. "Remember," she said.

"I will," came a woman's voice. "Stay busy, keep my mind occupied. No problem in _that _house."

River smiled at the unseen occupant. "And?"

"And when I feel it coming on, get among people I trust and talk to them. Even if they can't understand what I'm talking about, they'll listen, and I'll be better for it. Thank you, River. Omitofo."

Mal moved. He was at the cab and caught the door before it began to drop. River stared at him, eyes wide. "To the ship," he said in his most captainy voice. "Ma shong."

She took a step and turned back. "He wants to compare our stories. Don't let him bully you." She started off.

"Don't worry, nien ching da," the woman said, her voice turning smooth and deep. "We'll be just fine."

Mal's breath hitched. He recognized that little transition in manner; he'd seen it more than once as Inara had turned from him to address a client. He leaned into the softly-lit compartment and, for a moment, saw what he expected: a Companion, somewhat like their Ambassador in looks, regarding him as if she'd been waiting an hour for him and not regretting a minute now that he was here. Then his eyes cleared and he took in the little beauty's plain clothes - and her collar. "I'm wantin an explanation."

Her eyelids lowered slightly, and it seemed as if she was smiling at him, even though she wasn't. "My master forbids me to provide one, sir."

He dropped a hand to the revolver at his hip. Not that he intended to use it; the woman had unsheathed her weapon, and he'd touched his own out of reflex, was all. "Your master bein a hundan name of Badger. I don't know you, but I recognize that fancy little choker." He remembered the pitiful creature he'd seen it on last, having thought its beauty a tasteless joke, and wondered a moment about the previous wearer's fate before turning back to the business at hand. "And I'm thinkin he told you not to let me see you droppin her off, too. But I have, and I'd say that changes the landscape a bit." He extended a hand. "Step out."

She placed her hand in his, feather-light, and stepped out. Her graceful exit, and her poise as she stood regarding him, reminded him of Inara when she slipped into 'Companion' character in the presence of strangers; this woman made the collar around her neck look like an expensive present instead of a fetter. Mal wondered what sort of crime a Companion might commit to end up collared, and thought of Saffron. He determined to watch himself around her, reminding himself she was Badger's creature.

He let go of her hand. "All right," he said, "tell it."

"As I've said, I'm not permitted. But surely his speedy return of her says something of his goodwill. Three hundred thousand credits' worth."

Mal's poker face dropped in place. It seemed useless to make a denial, but he wasn't ready to give anything else to her until he knew more. "So I'm sposed to just take her back and say 'thank you,' that it?"

The patrician eyebrows rose. "I assume you want her back, sir."

"Not what I'm-" He stopped. He could see he'd get nowhere talking to this woman. But he wasn't about to let this slide. "What now?" He was of half a mind to make for the ship and order an emergency takeoff regardless. If Badger knew about River's status, he must know about Simon's as well; maybe he wanted to bag them together.

"I don't know, Captain. That lies between you and my master. But I believe the proper thing to do would be to call on him tomorrow." She turned back to the cab, sending a hint of perfume his way. "Shall I tell him to expect you?"

"No," he said heavily. "I'll come in my own time, and on my own business."

"Of course, Captain." She settled into the cab and smiled up at him, a gentle curve of the lips a woman might offer a man just before she kissed him. "I'm glad to have met you." The door dropped closed, and the cab slid away.

-0-

"I should be ashamed. I know it. But I couldn't resist." In the kitchen, Darcy and Doris paused in their after-breakfast cleaning to share a brief giggle.

"I wish I'd been there to see it."

Darcy put a bowl in the cupboard. "Bertram thinks you like him. It makes him fengla just thinking about it."

"I do like him. If I were twenty years younger, I might want to flirt with him instead of mothering him."

Darcy wrung out a rag in the sink. "Tsai bu shir. Ten would be plenty. You're just more comfortable mothering than…" She broke off and turned away.

"Darcy Eaton, if you stopped because you remembered you're a servant, I'm going to be angry."

"No. It just seemed insensitive to go on."

"Finish the thought," Doris said quietly.

"Your husband died a long time ago. Have there been any men in your life since, who didn't pay you?"

Doris resumed her work. "Not a one. I don't regret that. The men I raised take enough of my time and energy." She smiled. "And the dashing Captain rather reminds me of them both." She hung her towel up on the oven handle. "Go lie down for a bit. You've had a short night, and I have an errand for you later. And you'll want to be at your sharpest tonight when your master has need of you."

"Need of me? Doris, do you know something?"

"I know that I'm about to see if this is really my house or just a polite gesture."

-0-

"A dinner invitation." Mal studied Badger's slave girl, trying to figure the angle. "From Badger's ma."

"Yes. For you and anyone you care to bring with you. She only asks that you tell me how many to expect, so that she can make proper arrangements." The girl seemed as serene as ever, her face giving away nothing, but the feminine wiles were safely sheathed.

"Badger'll be there?"

"He almost always dines at home. But the invitation is from milady and no one else."

He considered for only a moment. Most of the crew was in the hold with him, watching the exchange. He said, "Zoe. Jayne. If I say yea, are you up for some home cookin?"


	8. Doing Good Works

"Quit fidgeting." Zoë, standing at the door to Badger's house, lifted an eyebrow as she straightened Mal's string tie. "Haven't seen you this nerved up since the time you found out you were married to Saffron. Badger's ma must be something."

Jayne fussed with the buttons on his cuffs and tugged at his collar. "This sure ain't how I pictured Badger's digs. No armed guard, not even a peephole in the door." He looked around distrustfully at the landscaping, as if expecting an ambush and missing his weapons.

"Best manners, Jayne," Mal said. "This is a lady's house, the lady baked those pies you were so took with. Behave yourself, and maybe we'll go back with something to share." He pressed the call button beside the door.

The door opened just a moment after he took his finger off the button. The indentured Companion, if that was what she was, offered a sort of curtsey. "Precisely on time, lady and gentlemen. My mistress bids you welcome." She stepped back, allowing them entry, and indicated a bench beside the door with a graceful gesture. "Please sit, gentle folk."

The three visitors settled on the bench, which was just wide enough to accommodate them. Captain Reynolds said, "You gonna tell her we're here?"

"My mistress is expecting you. I'm sure she heard the doorbell, and she'll be here shortly. Meanwhile, I have another duty to perform." She knelt, spreading the bottom half of her dress around her, and gripped the heel of his boot, lifting his foot.

His foot jerked, but he didn't free his boot from her grip. "Wai. What are you doing?"

"I am informed that you are all honored guests. Such guests aren't burdened with outdoor shoes in Mistress Eaton's house." She pulled off his boot with a small effort, set it aside, and reached for the other. "I believe a pair of my master's house shoes will just fit."

"I'm s'posed to wear Badger's _slippers_?"

"It's customary, sir," she said without looking up. "A sign of status, that you're being treated like family." She slid a pair of soft heelless shoes on the captain's feet, stood as smoothly as if hauled up on a line, and knelt again at Zoë's feet. "Milady, my apologies. My mistress's feet are rather smaller than yours, and female guests are rare. I believe a pair of my house shoes will fit you, if you would not be offended by the offer of a slave's garment."

"I'll take them," the first mate said quietly. "It don't matter to me."

"Thank you." She produced a pair of silken slippers and slid them on Zoë's feet. "They're a bit snug. Are they uncomfortable?"

"If I said yes, what would you do about it?"

"Cut the heels, milady."

"I like snug."

The girl nodded. "Thank you, milady." She removed Jayne's boots. "Master's house shoes would never fit a man of your stature, sir, but he sets by a store of larger sizes for gentleman guests." She opened a drawer under the bench. "These should do."

Jayne grinned at Mal and Zoë as the girl slipped a pair of soft felt shoes on his feet. "I could get used ta this."

Deeply uneasy, Mal stood when the girl did, and drew close. "Listen," he said in a low voice. "I surely don't know why I'm about to say this. But if you find an excuse to visit our ship again, you just ask, I'll have my mechanic strike your shackle, and I'll say I never saw you."

The girl turned wide eyes on him. "Captain… do you make this offer as an insult to my master?"

"What?"

"Forgive me, but I know you're not friends. Would depriving him of his property please you?"

He felt his brows gather. Zoë drew close and stuck an elbow in his ribs, but he went on. "No. I just don't like seein anybody like that. No person's got a right to own another, I don't care what the law says."

"I see." She lowered her eyes. "You've taken a great risk for a stranger you don't care for overmuch, as a matter of principle. You've offered me a measure of trust, and treated me as an equal. Would you permit me to speak to you briefly as a freewoman might?"

"Well, sure."

"Are you out of your rutting mind?" Before Jayne was done snorting, she went on. "You have a good heart, Captain, but you know gosa about the slave trade." She touched her collar. "This isn't just a badge of ownership or a token of shame. I can't simply cast it off and be free. Firstly, it's a great deal harder to remove without a key than you imagine. I doubt your mechanic's workshop has a tool that could break or cut it without doing me serious harm. Secondly, the instant it's off my neck without having been unlocked, every police station on Persephone will know that someone is attempting to steal my master's property, and where the theft is occurring. Even if we were in flight, you couldn't clear the first nav beacon without being boarded." She smiled up at him. "Some men are so handsome when they're feeling stubborn. If you have a sweetheart, she must have a hard time arguing with you."

"Listen, Miss -"

"Bizui. I'm only half done. I wasn't kidnapped or sentenced, Captain. I signed a contract, a generous one. My mistress and master are kind, and treat me more like family than property. My indenture will end in less than three years. My master has offered me real employ once my term is up, if I choose, and for my husband as well. Even a slave may have pride. I wouldn't betray his trust for my life." She curtseyed again. "Thank you sir, just the same. Your offer was kindly meant, and I'll remember that kindness."

The front door opened, and a man stepped in. It took Mal an instant to realize the man was Badger. He was dressed in a suit, but not his usual getup: the matching coat and shirt and pants were made of some silky-looking black material, and were all clean and pressed. The light gray tie around his neck was perfectly knotted. The little fixer said, "I expected you to back out, or be late."

"Wouldn't risk disappointing the lady. Dressing fancy for work these days, Badger."

Badger passed his hat to his servant and sat at the bench, and the girl knelt once again to remove his shoes. Mal noticed that she gave her master's black-socked feet a little rub before sliding on his house shoes. "Had a meet uptown. You have to be careful how you dress to meet the zang shang liu on their own patch. Too fancy, and they think you're trying to pass. Too casual-like, and you don't get taken serious. So I dress like I'm successful, but I know my place, and the barstids are comfortable with me." He stood. "You're in someone else's den, you show respect and play by their rules. That's good advice for everybody."

"Playin by somebody else's rules all the time is all right, I suppose, if you can afford to lose all the time," Mal said. "I'd be dead long before now if I had."

"Maybe you owe your life to more than your own cleverness, mate. You ever think of that?"

From the doorway connecting the foyer to the rest of the house, Doris Eaton said wryly, "I'm so glad you boys are getting along." She glided into the room and offered her cheek to her son. Badger kissed it unself-consciously.

"Mum, you've met the Captain. This is his first mate, Zoë… never got the last name, sorry."

"Washburn," Zoë said, with a raised eyebrow for Badger's show of manners. She offered both hands to Mrs. Eaton, who squeezed them briefly. "Pleased to meet you."

"And this fellow is Jayne Cobb. He's an associate of Captain Reynolds, serving rather in Mokey's capacity, I'd say."

Mrs. Eaton smiled and offered Jayne a hand, palm-down. Mal watched warily as the big merc reached for it, and could hardly contain his surprise when Jayne bent and raised it to briefly touch her knuckles to his lips. "Pleasure, ma'am. You bake a mean apple pie."

"Thank you kindly," Badger's mother said. "Captain Reynolds, I'm very pleased you accepted my invitation, and saw fit to bring friends."

"Truth be told, ma'am, once they found out, I'd have been hard-pressed to keep them from coming with."

"Dinner will be ready soon, but it needs some tending still. Why don't you let my son entertain you in the sitting room while I finish up, and I'll join you at serving time. Mr. Cobb, you have the look of a man who has a hard time filling up at one sitting, especially in company. I keep a dish or two warm on the stove for back-door guests on my son's business – nothing fancy, but filling. What would you say to a trip to my kitchen for an early start?"

Jayne flicked Mal a look. "I'll stay if you want."

_Serenity's_ captain frowned at the strange offer and his hired merc's readiness to accept. Then he glanced at Badger: the little fixer's pained expression was all he needed to make up his mind. "Go on, then. Just so I know where to find you."

Badger raised an arm in a shepherding gesture. "To the parlor, then. I have a whiskey with a good reputation on the sideboard, if you've a mind. Something to warm things up a bit, eh?"

Mal stepped along, Zoë at his side. "Not the sort of refreshment you serve up in your office, Badger. Or the sort of manners, either."

Badger gestured them through a door. "I'm playing host in my mother's house, Captain. And I'm always on my best behavior around me mum, which is why I do as little business at home as possible. Sides, I'm a bit of a Wemmick, I'm told." On the other side of the door was a room furnished in a style somewhat resembling Inara's shuttle, albeit in more muted colors. Badger went to a fancy wooden side table where a number of low, wide crystal glasses rested bottom-up on a fancy silver tray. He righted three, and began to pour from a matching decanter, splashing a dark amber liquid into each. "Speaking of which. Since this is a social occasion, and I've got family about, I'd appreciate the use of my Christian name."

Mal took the glass from the little fixer's hand. "And that would be?"

"Bertram Eaton. Eaton will do, Captain Reynolds." Their host offered Zoë a glass. "I don't think first names would sit right, do you?"

-0-

Doris set the big man down at the head of the kitchen table, drew a plate from the cupboard, and began to dish up from the stove. "Darcy, see to the master." Darcy gave the big man a glance, clearly uncomfortable with leaving her mistress alone with him. In a lower voice, Doris said, "Go. I don't want him alone in there with them."

Jayne Cobb looked uncertainly at the Western place setting, the fork in particular. "Ain't used one a these in a long time."

"We don't stand on manners in the kitchen," Doris said as she slid the plate in front of him and added a linen napkin. "If the spoon suits you better, use it. Or I can give you chopsticks."

He picked up the spoon and dug in. She watched him apply himself to her meat and fried potatoes as if he were alone in the room. When he was half through, she buttered a thick slice of bread and set it in the spot he'd cleaned on the plate. "You remember me. I'm pleased."

The utensil paused, but he didn't look up. "You'd be hard to forget, Destiny."

"That's not my real name."

"Never thought it was. I wasn't that green. But I liked it."

-0-

Mal downed his before-dinner drink, a smooth whiskey that deserved more respect, but tossing the glass's contents into the back of his throat and feeling the burn was a better choice than reaching for Badger's pretty silk tie. "There's things in this world that mean more than money. That's one of the things the War was about."

Badger scoffed, his glass held lightly in his fingers. "The War was all about money, and never mind the fancy speeches. It would never have even got off the ground if not for a few clever blokes who saw profit in it, blokes high enough on the ladder ..." He sniffed at his glass and took a deep swallow. "Well, they divided the 'Verse into two sides, too, just not the same ones. They sponsored the loudmouths who turned public opinion and worked the crowds on both sides of the Border into a fighting mood. They bought the ears of the politicians, who got in line for a chance to run things. They paid off the big special interest groups like the Church and the guilds with fancy promises. They bought a war, and now they're collecting a fat return on their investment."

"Nobody bought me and mine."

"They didn't have to. They just pointed you in the direction they wanted you to go and twisted your tail."

"I wasn't hoodwinked by pretty speeches, either. Think I didn't notice how many rich men's sons stayed home while the rest of us went out to fight? I fought for reasons that were put in me before I was old enough for school, by people who mattered to me." A part of Malcolm Reynolds was surprised at the way he was opening up to someone he thought so small of, telling things he'd kept from many friends.

"More's the pity, then." Badger sipped from his glass, just wetting his lips. "You got family, Reynolds? I know you were a rancher on Shadow before the War."

_And how did you know that, and why did you trouble yourself to learn it?_ Mal's suspicions rose. Did Badger's ma really set up this gathering? "My mother. We trade post now and again."

The little fixer raised an eyebrow, but said no more. "And you, smart lady?"

"Plenty, scattered all over."

"See em much?"

"Not much. The ones I want to see the most don't stay in one place long."

"Like you, eh?" He gave the mate a grin.

The serving girl proffered the whiskey decanter; Mal held out his glass while she filled it. She glanced at Zoë, who shook her head; hers was still untouched in her hand. As Darcy moved to top off Badger's, Mal said, "I s'pose the War did well by you."

Badger scoffed into his glass. "Bout turned out me pockets."

"That seems unlike. Clever businessman like yourself."

The little fixer looked over his glass to regard Mal with gunslinger's eyes. "I wasn't near as clever then. I knew the game was rigged, but I played anyway."

_So did I_, Mal thought. "What happened? Bad investments, or bad partners?"

"Both, you might say, though they were one and the same. Independent Congress."

Zoë spoke up. "You saying you dropped money in war bonds?"

"No. War bonds didn't pay for the buttons on the generals' coats. I did the real money."

-0-

Jayne shoveled in another bite and talked around it. "'Member the food as fond as the sexin. No offense."

"I'll take that as meant, and say thankee," Doris said with a smile. "I've been feeding men longer than the other thing."

"Don't spose you remember me too good. It was just two days."

"Hmph." She set a glass of milk beside his plate. "Forget my clever young cardsharp from Halley? My big coltish farm boy with the playful hands and the appetite of two grown men?" She whisked his empty plate away and replaced it with a full one. "Not just at table, either. Did you do the job you came for?"

He scoffed. "Worked it six days before the Feds broke it up. I didn't even get paid. Best thing about the whole trip was you."

She studied his features. "The beard is right becoming. A cat could have licked off what grew on your face back then. It was the most boyish thing about you."

He looked up at her. "You still in the trade, I got money. Not like I useta throw around, but…"

She scoffed and lightly slapped the top of his head. "Listen to you. Why would you throw away good coin on a swaybacked old mare like me?"

The look he gave her made her feel twenty years younger. "You look plenty fit ta ride."

She busied herself at the stove. "Well, I've been out for years. I don't even clean house for hire now."

"Well, 's that." He shoveled more food into his mouth. "How is it with you?"

"One of my sons is in prison," she said quietly. "But he'll still be a young man when he gets out, with a wife and family waiting. I'm sure he won't go back. Aside from that, my life is roses. You?"

He leaned back and took a breath. "Been with this bunch a while now. The pay's kinda irregular, and the chow is gosa, but it's a good crew. I can sleep with both eyes shut, and what I do in the day don't come back to me at night. I plan on stayin with em awhile yet." He picked up the fork and experimented on a chunk of beef. "Badger's really your kid?"

"My oldest son. He's good to me."

"I don't want ta see anything a yours come to harm, but there's trouble brewin tween him and Mal. Tween him and me, too."

"I expect the trouble between him and the captain will shake out by the time you leave. But what have you got against my Bertram?"

He gripped the fork a little tighter. "There's a girl. Not mine, but she's my job. Trouble's got a way of findin her. And her and Badger together sounds like more trouble than I want to think about."

"I know the girl you're talking about. I haven't met her, but I know Darcy and Bertram are taken with her, and that's enough to give her welcome in my house. And she has business here as well, I'm told."

"Her business or his?"

"Theirs. You might ask her, I suppose, but she sounds like someone who's in the habit of keeping secrets."

"Her own, anyway. But she's gorram hard to keep a secret from."

She smiled. "Don't worry, baobei. Bertram Eaton takes proper care of women in his charge. She'll come to no harm that's in his power to stop."

From elsewhere in the house, Bertram's voice rose, edged with anger and talking fast. It cut off, replaced by conversation too low to make out. Jayne put down his fork and stood. He turned towards the door, then turned back long enough to pluck the napkin from the table and wipe his mouth. "Ain't used one a these in a while either. Let's see how our bosses' little dif'rences is shakin out."

-0-

"Reynolds, the War wouldn't have lasted a week with just the likes of you on the Independent side. Think a bunch o' disgruntled farmers with varmint guns kept the Alliance at arm's length for five years? It takes money to fight a war, boyo, money for ships and fuel and weapons and ammo and boots a man can march in - or run in. And a million other things you wouldn't think of, like bribe money to keep the Alliance's eyes and ears at our ports telling lies about our movements. You think you got all that by passing the hat?" Badger finished his drink with a second swallow and stood turning the empty glass in his fingers.

"We gave everything we had. It just wasn't enough." _Maybe because too much got siphoned off by the middlemen_, Mal thought, imagining he might be looking at one such this moment.

The servant girl moved close, sensing trouble no doubt, but Badger scoffed, oblivious or uncaring. "Tsai bu shir. Half the worlds on the Independent side joined up cause they didn't want to pay taxes. The Rim provided plenty of hotheads eager to join the fight, but how much do you suppose they tossed in the pot? The worlds with their own armies were tapped out the first year. That's why they came to me."

Reynolds met Zoë's eyes. "Is that right. You bankrolled the Independent side. Never would have guessed you were a patriot, Badger. 'Lives, fortunes, sacred honor', and all."

Badger's face clouded "You think the Independents were all 'patriots', I spose, by which you mean they were folks too _honorable_ to take help from the likes 'o me. Well, then, you tell me, Sarge. Who the bloody hell do you think kept you in beans and bullets?"

The serving girl touched three fingers to the rim of Badger's empty glass and deftly removed it from his clenched hand. "Would you like some tea, master? To settle your stomach for dinner." Her eyes were downcast but she still managed to get her signal across. Mal wondered how often she diverted her temperamental boss or played peacemaker for him.

Badger took the hint. "I would, Darcy. Xie xie."

Something about Badger's first-ever mention of the girl's name tugged at Mal's mind, but he didn't have time to think it through before she turned to him. "And you, Captain Reynolds?"

He nodded. "Thankee."

"And you, milady?"

"No, thanks."

"Very good." She smiled at Mal. "One tablespoon of honey, no cream?" She moved to the door.

Mal frowned. "How did you…"

"From your last visit, sir. I served tea that time as well, you may recall." She disappeared through the doorway.

"Last visit? Wait-" Mal turned to Badger, his eyes feeling squeezed tight in their sockets.

"Guess you were right about feeding her once in a while, Sarge," Badger said. "The little mare fattened up right nice, neh?"

-0-

Darcy paused on her way to the kitchen, taking a moment to settle her nerves. She hadn't intended to insert herself in the conversation, but Doris had sent her to protect Bertram, and she judged that included saving him from himself, and she hadn't been able to think of anything else to deflect the two men from their collision course. When she felt certain she could handle the service without dropping or spilling anything, she entered the kitchen. And stopped again.

Doris and the dangerous-looking crewman she'd diverted to the kitchen were standing beside the table, eyes locked unsmiling on each other. Though they weren't close enough to touch, quite, Darcy recognized the nature of that mutual gaze, and was suddenly certain that the two had a history. They turned at her entrance, and Bertram's mother turned again, to untie her apron and hang it up. "We were just coming out, Darcy. Is everything all right?"

"The master wants tea."

Doris raised an eyebrow at that, but ran hot water into the kettle. As Darcy drew near to take down the tea, Doris said in a low voice, "I'll tell you the story later." In her 'company' voice, she said, "Mr. Cobb, would you stay with me and push the serving cart into the dining room once I load it?"

As she'd expected, Bertram and the captain had an eye on the door for her return. Bertram said, "Darcy, the captain has a question or two for you. Normally, I'd tell him to pee up a rope, but I doubt you tossed out that little tidbit just for snorts. So you've got my permit to answer how you like, including telling him to mind his own business."

The tall grim man was clearly uncomfortable, but determined to have his answers. "You're the same sickly specimen I saw dragging around here last time I came?"

Darcy set the tea service on a side table. "Well put, Captain. Yes."

"What happened to you?"

"Drop addiction," she said simply. She felt that odd detachment settling in again, as it had when she'd told her story to Lady Binh: as if she were speaking of someone she knew well, but not herself. "Just before I came here, I was living in a shipping container near the main port with five other derelicts. I spent most of my days begging my dealers for more time and one more drop." She arranged the service, soothed by the familiar task, as she recounted a very abbreviated version of the story she'd told Lady Binh. She left out her history prior to her addiction, as well as her relationship to Bertram. It was a bit surprising how little time recounting three years of her life took; by the time the tea had steeped, she was done. "I think, in another day or two, they were going to pick me up and deliver me to a chop shop. You know the term?" She poured the captain's tea and stirred in three teaspoonfuls of honey, then passed him the cup two-handed, presenting it handle-first.

The captain took the cup by the handle and nodded. "Bootleg organ bank."

"Yes. The debt was great enough that I wouldn't have left there except in various containers."

"How did you end up under this roof?"

"I'm related by marriage," she dodged. "The Eaton family's black sheep, actually, since for most of my life I had an abundance of money and a dearth of common sense." She prepared Bertram's cup and presented it to him. "This man offered to clear that debt for three years' indenture. It was doubtless the worst deal he's ever struck. He put a collar on me, to separate me from my old life and keep money out of my hands, and to keep me under house arrest while he got me clean and healthy again." She turned to meet the captain's eyes. _And now you know why I won't desert him._

Reynolds said to Bertram, "And you did all that cause she's family."

"Can you think of a better reason?" Bertram sipped noisily; Darcy nearly smiled at the man's attempt to cover his embarrassment with a show of poor manners. "And now she's crew besides. She's very handy at times, and already paid back a good deal of what I spent on her, by my count. No call to accuse me o' bein a soft touch."

Doris appeared at the door. "Gentlemen and lady, Mr. Cobb is waiting for us in the dining room."

-0-

Kaylee was sitting at the base of the ramp in her shabby little lawn chair, watching the passing traffic and catching the oblique sunshine that had just begun to reach the ramp as the setting sun dipped toward the horizon and peeked under the gooseneck above her. The Captain hadn't said when they'd be back, so they weren't really late, but she was a little worried anyway. Not of Badger, unless the Captain did something foolish; but she thought that the woman who'd brought the message from Badger's ma had looked to be delivering more than one kind of invitation. When the woman had smiled at Mal with her eyes, waiting for his answer, Kaylee had glanced at Inara and been mighty surprised to see another sort of smile stretching the Companion's lips - professional appreciation, maybe? Some understanding had passed between those two fine ladies, something that a prairie hen like her couldn't be expected to understand, she supposed. But Kaylee didn't need to be a Companion to know that if a woman like that had bad intentions, she could mess a man up worse than a barfight.

"Well. I might have guessed you'd be tending one of these."

She turned her head and stared at the strange man who'd come up on the other side of her. He was past middle age, with white hair, dressed in a spacer's plain sturdy clothes. Then she recognized the voice: _I cannot abide useless people._ "Sir Murphy! I didn't hardly recognize you without your sash and your fancy rig."

He raised his eyebrows. "'Sir Murphy'? What happened to 'Seldon'?"

"Well," she said, a little flustered, "just cause you once came to the rescue of a little hick girl at the Governor's Ball don't mean you made a new friend."

"I surely hope that's not true. You made that ball the best I'd been to in years. You and your tempery escort."

She smiled wide. "So, did you come looking for me?"

He shook his head. "I wish I could say so, but you were just a pleasant surprise. I was directed to your ship, rather."

"Directed by who?"

"A business associate. Very useful fellow."

-0-

After the opulence of the sitting room, Mal figured Mrs. Eaton's dining room would be swank. But he didn't expect what he saw when she and Darcy opened the double doors and the light of a thousand reflections spilled onto him.

The room was filled with treasure. Every part of it glittered with objects fine-wrought and made from the best. The crystal chandelier over the linen-covered six-place table was as brilliant as the one hovering over the Governor's Ball, if much smaller, and its light fell in tiny shards on the walls and furnishings and was cast back from the precious metal adorning the table. The elaborate utensil settings, a combination of Western and Eastern table tools, were gold or some alloy that copied its look perfectly. The stemmed glasses were crystal, the rims coated with a silvery metal that shone like jewelry. The plates were silver-coated as well, and mirror-polished, their edges trimmed in another white metal that returned a slightly darker reflection. Mal swallowed. _Platinum._

Jayne sat at a place just to the right of the head of the table, grinning. He rubbed the edge of his plate between thumb and forefinger. "Ai ya. Eatin off plates made of solid money."

Mal stiffened with embarrassment, but Mrs. Eaton smiled at the big merc like he'd said something clever. "It is a bit showy for a middle-class dining room, I'll grant you, but it was a gift from my youngest son before he married. Truth, I think his fiancée picked it out; it always seemed more to her taste. But it's beautiful, neh?"

Jayne stood as Mrs. Eaton moved to the head of the table. Mal and Zoë followed, taking chairs on the left, and waited for her to sit. Badger made to step past them to reach his mother, but she said, "Your place is at the other end, Bertram. I'm sure one of our gentleman guests will do the honors." Mal paused, confused, until Jayne pulled out her chair and pushed it in behind her as she sat. Feeling like a hick, he held Zoë's chair, then sat beside her. Badger waited until they were all settled, then sat at the other end of the table.

Dinner was a strange mix of formal and casual, everyday and exotic. The food was a mixture of Eastern and Western dishes, not elaborate but made from the best, presented in many courses. Darcy served from the cart and the ornate sideboard until the victuals ran out, then Badger's ma would rise and accompany cart and girl to the kitchen for the next set.

The conversation and company were a mite strange, as well. Badger was a genial host with the manner of a man among friends, or at least a successful businessman among valued associates. He kept the conversation flowing with questions that took more than a 'yes' or 'no' to answer, requiring his guests to tell more than Mal was used to sharing about his life and history. But the pleasant atmosphere and good food – and especially, Mrs. Eaton's presence at the other end of the table – somehow kept him from feeling uncomfortable. Jayne, telling unusually proper stories of his adventures aboard _Serenity_, seemed plain mellow. Zoë didn't say much, but a smile touched her lips more than once as she followed the talk, trading the occasional remark with Badger's ma, and she told the company a little story about growing up aboard her family's ship that Mal had never heard.

He suddenly realized he was having a good time.

About the time Mal felt too full to move, Mrs. Eaton called a recess and had Darcy clear the place settings and replace them with coffee cups. "Dessert in a bit," she said, "After the meal settles."

"Well," Badger said with a smile for Zoë, "you and Mum have been quiet just lately, listening to the gents rattle on. Is there a subject the ladies would like to bring up?"

Zoë took a sip and said quietly, "I'd hear more about your part in the War, if you're of a mind to tell."

Badger raised his eyebrows. "Is that right?" He stared down into his cup. "I don't usually talk business at home, much less at table."

Mrs. Eaton said, "It's an old story, dear, and I already know it all. Entertain our guests." She looked very deliberately at Mal. "I think it's a matter of some importance to them, and they should know somewhat of it." And just like that, Mal knew the reason behind the dinner invitation, and that Badger had had no part in its planning.

"Well." Badger shrugged and set the cup down. "I got into it before you or the Captain did, likely. I offered my help right at the start, but the fine gentlemen who'd pledged their lives and sacred honor – _not_ their fortunes – they didn't see a need for my services. That changed before too long, just as I knew it would. So when they got back in touch, we'd already laid the groundwork."

"'We'?"

"Couldn't have done it by meself. As I said before, the war effort needed a _lot_ of money. Even the cash to set up was beyond my means. But I wasn't the only…" He smiled. "Independent-minded sort who thought the Movement was a chance for real change. Mind you, I'm first to admit we weren't all-" his nostrils flared- "_patriots_. Some had scores to settle, some smelled a profit, and some just thought letting the Core Worlds run things would make it too hard to do business. But we were all agreed on tossing the old rascals out if we could, and seeing what good might come of it."

Mal interrupted. "And what did you do?"

"We refilled the Independent war chest." He looked down into his cup, thinking. "It took time, time we didn't have, I'm thinking. If we hadn't already got pledges for the seed money, the Alliance would ha' won before we got it all together. As was, the Independents lost a lot of ground that second year cause of shortages, ground they never got back." He tipped the cup up, emptying it. As Darcy refilled it, he went on. "As may. What we did was set up a way to make money on the other side of the Border, and move money across the Border, and buy off the books in the Core."

Zoë frowned. "You got the money to run the War from the Inner Worlds?"

"It's where the money was. We got a little from the Outers, but not near enough." He looked at Mal. "Most of the Independents' military hardware came from the Core side of the border, you might know. To lay hands on it, we needed credits, plenty of them, and a way to launder them." He smiled. "Turns out, tight as the Core is about proper accounts, there's a raft of exceptions as pertains to gambling. You ever hear of the Fang Shin Lottery?"

Mal said, "I'm not partial to gambles that don't give me some way to improve my chances."

"I have," Zoë said, "though I never bought a ticket."

"Well, I bought plenty," Jayne said from behind his cup, which he gripped without using the handle. "Every hundan I knew did. Useta be the biggest game anyplace. A winning ticket would set a man for life, and there was a winner about every week. Bet half the platinum in the 'Verse moved through it during the War."

It was Mal's turn to frown. "Platinum? But if you got the money from the Core …"

Jayne shook his head, trying not to grin. "Thought I already told ya what kinda folk bought tickets."

Mal looked from Jayne to Badger, who was smiling too, in a not entirely friendly way. He felt a twinge in his forearm, and realized he'd been holding his cup halfway to his mouth for quite awhile now. Badger said, "Strewth. The last three years of the War, the Independents ran on the cash got from pimps, prostitutes, con artists and petty thieves, the scum of the 'Verse."

"And me," Jayne said, hoisting his cup as if toasting himself.

Doris smiled from behind her cup. "Did you know any winners, Mr. Cobb?"

"Two. Not too good, or I mighta hit em up. Knew of em, though. One of em went through the whole pile in two-three years of high livin and killed hisself with it. The other one collected his money and dropped out of sight. Some say he went legit, started a business with it." The big merc leaned back, making the chair creak. "He's prolly broke too. Had my druthers, I'd pick the first way."

Mal set his cup down. "And the house percentage went to the war effort."

"Every penny less expenses," Badger said. "And by 'expenses' I mean the cash we needed to keep it going and not a penny more." The little fixer set down his cup as well. "That changed, after the War was done and I got out of it. It slipped into other hands, and the payouts got smaller and farther between. People quit buying tickets, and now it's just a ghost of its former."

"Yeah," Jayne said. "Don't even know anybody sells the tickets anymore."

"And with that," Said Doris Eaton, "I think we're ready for dessert. Darcy, will you see to it? And brew a pot of fresh." After the door closed behind the girl, the lady of the house said in a low voice, "Dessert is some sort of fancy chocolate torte. Darcy's idea. I don't know where she got the recipe. She insisted on making it all herself. Pray be kind."

-0-

The curve of Badger's landscaped walk took the front door out of view after twenty steps. Mal said, "What do you make of all that? And what the hell is a wemmick?"

"It's a fella who acts like a cold jiba at work an a favorite uncle at home," Jayne said. "You never heard a wemmicks?"

"A right deplorable gap in my education. Lucky I've got a scholar aboard to set me right."

They turned at the end of Badger's walk, headed toward the shuttle stop. Ten steps down the sidewalk, Jayne slapped the heel of his hand against his head. "Gorram it. Forgot somethin."

Mal frowned. "Forgot somethin? What?"

The big merc seemed to struggle with his answer. "Somethin. I'll be right back." He turned and strode briskly back and turned down the walk and disappeared.

Mal looked back the way they'd come, almost ready to follow. He didn't need any fresh trouble with Badger, and Jayne was the personification of trouble. And the big merc had lately been giving Simon some competition for the role of River's protector. He took a step forward, and Zoë laid a hand on his forearm.

"He'll be right back," she said. "Whistling a tune, most likely."

-0-

Doris Eaton stood on her threshold with a warm pie in her hands and her daughter-in-law beside her, gazing down the walk towards the unseen street. Darcy said, "You're sure he'll be back?"

Doris smiled in answer as the big man rounded the bend and clopped up the curved path. "Keep an eye out for Bertram, dear."

He slowed as he approached the two women, and flicked a glance at Darcy. Doris said, "She knows."

He nodded twice, and reached for the pie as she raised it. One big hand slid under the plate, supporting it; but the other, the right, covered one of Doris's. "Obliged."

"The obligation is all mine." She smiled up at him from thirty centimeters' height difference. "I don't think I ever thanked you for saving my life."

"Don't know that I did. But you thanked me plenty, and more'n once."

Her lashes dropped briefly to her cheeks. "Any time you hit dirt, spaceman, you'll find a hot meal at this house. Don't forget." She slid her hand from under his and relinquished the pastry.

He stared down at her, clearly wanting to say something else. Finally, he said, "You was the last whore I kissed on the mouth."

"And you my only Johnnie. Omitofo, Mister Jayne Cobb."

As they watched the big man saunter down the walk, Darcy said, "Do you remember him, Doris? Really?"

"Oh, that I do."

The corners of Darcy's mouth turned up. "Did you offer him his money back?" It was an old joke among those who shared Doris and Darcy's former profession. No woman whose business was pleasure would give up her fee simply because she'd had occasion to enjoy her work.

Doris smiled as well. "I might have, as a compliment, if I'd been a bit surer he'd refuse. But not for anything he did in bed. A fair bit more enthusiasm than skill, as I recall. To be fair, he was still a boy with fuzz on his chin, despite being twice my size, and I don't doubt he's improved with practice in the years between. But I do remember him fondly.

"It was early in my career, Martin just a couple of years in the ground and Bernard not old enough for school. I was cleaning houses for a string of upper-middle-class families at the time. Most of the masters of those houses were availing themselves of my other services as well, usually when the missus was out to tea or taking in a show. Sometimes one of those fine ladies would go to visit relatives, and I'd be invited to spend the night. I didn't like spending nights away from my boys, but I liked seeing them hungry even less. So, if it wasn't a school night, I'd have a sitter in to get them to bed so I could. But, free day or not, I was always home when they woke.

"One of those houses, though, was owned by a shady businessman who lived single. I didn't like him much, but we were polite, and we did business – both kinds – and he also had me over to entertain an occasional… let's call them 'associates,' I'm not sure he had any friends. One afternoon I let myself into his place to do the dusting, and found six strangers laying about the furniture.

"They looked me over like I was Christmas dinner. The master of the house appeared at my elbow and told me that cleaning could wait for some other day. He took me aside and told me that these men were 'business associates' spending a couple of nights here on the quiet. I didn't ask any questions about that, of course. He said he wanted me to cook dinner for them, and I agreed, almost afraid not to. But when he followed me into the kitchen and hinted that they'd likely be looking for 'entertainment' after, I dug in my heels. I hadn't made arrangements to be gone all night, and, besides, I didn't like the idea one bit. A setup like that, one woman shared by a number of men, that's begging for trouble, and it's usually the woman gets the worst of it. 'Let me make a few calls,' I said. 'I'm sure I can find some more entertainers, even on short notice, maybe one for each.'

"He said no, he couldn't have that many strangers knowing these men were here. 'No offense, Dee,' he said, 'but a biao-tze can't keep her mouth shut about anything.' I swallowed my pride and kept silent while a little knot of ice grew in my stomach. He'd never called me a whore before. I wasn't offended by the word, but the way he'd said it made me feel like a thing instead of a person, and that's how men think of folk they're prepared to hurt."

Darcy nodded, remembering a few clients whose charm had turned into something far more predatory once they'd gotten her alone and private, and their playful aggression, so common to the men she serviced, rising suddenly into rage and terrifying violence that had left her still unfit for work days afterward.

"Then, I think, he saw that I was frightened, and it _amused _him. 'Come on, Dee,' he said, with a smile that made me want to turn and run. 'Think of the money.'

"I thought of the money. And I thought of my chances of being found in an alley or rubbish bin the next day or so, after the fun got out of hand. Then I thought of my chances of ever getting out of the house if I said no. 'I'll think on it while I cook,' I said. 'Mayhap after they sample my work there, they'll lose their taste for any more.'

"He chuckled and went off to join his boys, while I went back to my cooking. But I kept an ear cocked. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I didn't like the sound of their laughter at all. Their voices got closer, and I realized they'd moved to the dining table. They were feeling impatient, it seemed.

"My client might have been close-mouthed about these men, but they were less so. I could hear them a bit more clear from the table, and catch most of their talk as I rattled pans in the kitchen. They were here to start an operation that they expected would make them big coin, something involving robbery. They'd just come from one like it on another world, and they had their last pay in their pockets. And, being the sort of men they were, they were looking for something to spend it on. That wasn't reassuring; it didn't matter how much they offered me if I finished the night dead or too broken up to work ever.

"I was starting to think of sneaking out the kitchen door, but I was afraid my client might come after me to express his displeasure and shut my mouth. I was just about nerved up to do it anyway when I heard a footstep just behind me. I turned, and my heart jumped into my throat, because the biggest of them was standing within easy reach. And reach he did. I thought sure he'd come to make up my mind for me, and mayhap collect a free sample. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close, and I let out a gasp they heard in the next room, judging by the chuckles after. But he stopped just shy of us touching, and spoke in my ear. 'You got a choice to make, girlie, and it ain't stay or go. What's it gonna be, just me for the night at triple rate, or get passed around like a plate at Thanksgivin dinner?'"

Darcy smiled. "Was his voice so deep even then?"

"Like a big cat's. It feared me so, I almost didn't get his words at first. I'd never heard of 'Thanksgiving dinner' - some feast holiday where he came from, I supposed – but the meaning was clear enough. He didn't wait for me to speak my answer; I'm sure he read it in my eyes. He nodded and let go of me. Still keeping me close with his back to the door, he touched his lower lip. 'Plums.' Then his nose. 'Pears.' Left ear. 'Apples.' Right ear. 'Grapes. That's enough. Too fancy gets you caught.' He reached behind my ear and loosed a lock from my bun. 'Let em see that fore you put it back up.' Then he turned and sauntered back out, and after a moment of talk I couldn't make out, I heard the whole bunch of them laugh. I heard him say in a big voice, 'Anybody up for a game of Tall Card?' Then I understood."

"You helped him cheat."

"Oh, so right. The owner of the house had left for the evening – on other business, praps, or to avoid becoming a witness. That was a bit of luck, since he was the only one with pockets deep enough to ruin the scam. I came out of the kitchen whenever things didn't need minding and circled the table, pouring drink, setting out snacks, changing ashtrays. I even lit a cigar or two, knowing that such men were pleased by little services from women, and made a bit of small talk. They thought I was advertising my wares, of course, but I was just putting them at ease while I looked at the cards in their hands. Instead of putting that lock of hair back up, I dropped one on the other side as well, to give me an excuse to touch the sides of my head. The signals he gave me were simple enough that I could change things up a bit without a misunderstanding. I'd wind the hair at my temple or check my earring or tuck a bit of hair back behind my ear, and it all meant the same thing. I'd touch my lower lip with my finger or my teeth, or lick my lips, and it was 'plums'. I never made eye contact with my partner, and usually waited till I'd turned away from my mark before I signaled.

"He could look at me without trying to hide it, of course; they were all looking me over, thinking about dessert, as it were. I was sure he was getting my signals. That's why the first half-hour was so worrisome, because he lost almost every hand."

Darcy smiled. "Picking out his mark and setting him up with build-up winnings while he cleared out the other players."

"You know more about it than I did, dear. All I saw was how many players were giving up their stakes to the wrong man when they dropped out. I didn't notice that my partner's didn't shrink any even though he wasn't winning, or how he steered the other man into the right decisions as they played.

"Finally, it was just the two of them, with the others standing about watching. The other fellow had four times my partner's stake. I moved in close to see his cards, and one of the others said, 'Leave the room, whore.' See, while I'd been watching the players, he'd been watching me. I don't think he was sure, else he wouldn't have bothered ordering me off. But as soon as I was gone, I thought, and my man started losing …"

"What did you do?"

"Froze up, while thoughts of what they might do to me scurried through my head. Then that boy spoke up, just as easy as you please, as if he didn't notice them fingering their knife handles as they stood around the table waiting for someone to say, 'pian shi'. 'Hell Bert, ain't no call ta be so suspicious. He ain't been _that_ lucky.' And just like that, their eyes all shifted from me to the other player, looking back at them over a pile of money that used to be theirs. 'Sides, when did he have a chance to steal her away from me?' The boy chuckled and slapped my rump to send me into the kitchen, out of sight and mind."

"He won, I take it."

"Cleaned that jiba out in six hands. He told me later, 'I was gonna send you away fore I started winnin anyway. Just needed you ta thin em out. If I couldn't beat that shagua without cheatin, I deserved ta be shot.'" She smiled at the memory. "And that was that. By the time I brought out the main meal, he was the only man with coin to pay for dessert. I had to put up with a few pinches and gropes from the others while I served, but when the dishes were done, I was his for the night, and they knew it. I woke my babes with a kiss the next morning, sleepy but no worse for my unexpected night's work. And I went back the next as well. I'm fair sure he put every coin he made off them into my hands before he left."


	9. The Costs of Doing Business

The surface shuttle back to Eavesdown was crowded with working-class folk in worn and dirty clothes, all headed home after a day's work among the affluent. Rather than take widely-separated seats, the three shipmates stood in the aisle, each with a hip braced against a seat back, swaying with the vehicle's motions. Jayne held Missus Eaton's pie between his big hands as if it belonged on a velvet pillow. Mal absently watched the rows of large neat houses slip by the windows. He was sure they belonged to respectable folk, ambitious and smart, with solid reputations and roots in the community. He wondered how many of those folk owed their prosperity to the sacrifices of better men.

Through most of the War, Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds had been fairly certain that he and his comrades were being used by men with motives baser than patriotism. But the Independent cause was one that touched the heart of him and defended what he held good, and he'd figured that, as long as those men helped him achieve his goals, what they wanted from the War didn't much matter. It wasn't until Serenity Valley that he'd seen the fatal flaw in that line of reasoning.

After four years of grinding defeat, Hera had been the Independents' chance to turn the tide. It was a mining world, rich in materials vital to the Alliance war effort, and the Core needed it intact. That meant sending an invasion force to take and secure it, unlike the Alliance's usual practice of bombing a world into submission, then sending troops in to clean out pockets of resistance. The Alliance, its offensive capabilities stretched thin as it advanced further into the Rim and the theater of operations expanded exponentially, had allocated most of its uncommitted ground forces to the assault. The Independents, however, had got wind of the enemy's plans in time to send a force of their own to defend the little world. And, for once, it had seemed as if the Rim Worlds held the better hand.

The Alliance commander's plan had been simple. Relying on speed and surprise to establish landing sites on what he'd thought was a lightly-defended target, he'd left most of his task force waiting nearby at a rendezvous point just outside the system and dispatched a spearhead force consisting of his strike carriers and a handful of support ships. The carriers would deploy their small contingent of ground-support aircraft as they descended, to provide cover for the beachheads. Once the troops were down and in possession of the principal mining and ore-processing facilities, he'd thought, he would call for the rest. His boots on the ground would keep the mines running and hold the prize against any remaining Rim troops; his flotilla of naval vessels would arrive and take up positions in orbit and on picket well ahead of any Independent relief force. There were tactical advantages to guarding a planet from orbit rather than further out, advantages having to do with mobility and fuel conservation that Mal understood better as a ship's captain than he had as a sergeant. All he'd known then was that each side wanted the bulk of their ships circling Hera when the other fleet arrived.

The Independents' plan had been simple too. By the time the Alliance had appeared overhead, the Rimworlders were already well dug in and hidden from eyes aloft. As soon as the troop carriers hit atmo, they would be sitting ducks for ground-based missile batteries; whatever remnant of the assault force that reached the ground should be easy pickings for the Independent forces. At the same time, the Independent warships would come a-running from their own hiding place, a rubble field at a nearby libration point much closer to Hera than the Alliance's staging area.

The Independent Navy didn't have any big capital ships like the Alliance battlewagons, nor dedicated atmospheric craft. What it did have were a great many converted merchant ships, some of them small and sturdy enough to serve double duty as patrol boats and ground-support craft. While the larger and more heavily-armed vessels waited in orbit to meet the Alliance fleet, the Jayhawks and Cerberuses would make short work of the Alliance skiffs, and then commence to pound the surviving Khangs into the ground like tent stakes.

The Rim Worlds had no use for the mines – their industry wasn't up to making their own arms out of ore – but the General Staff reckoned that, once they'd crippled the Core World force, they could hold Hera against anything the Alliance could spare to send against them, until the purplebellies' war effort withered for lack of essential materials. Nobody believed the spoiled Core Worlders would be prepared to tear down their pretty skyscrapers and strip-mine their nature preserves to build warships.

It was a battle the Independents should have won. But Mal remembered a quote from some old general, maybe from clear back on Earth-that-Was, that he'd seen proved time and again during the War: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

At the beginning of the fight, he and Zoë had stood outside their camouflaged bunker, looking into the sky. He'd watched the tiny stars of the Alliance transports' drives get bigger and bigger, and waited for the SAM batteries to put paid to the invaders. But no exhaust trails had lanced up from the ground to meet them, and too soon he'd heard the drives change pitch as they'd neared the ground. The Browncoats had come boiling out of their hides and engaged the vessels, and even destroyed a few in the air with point-defense antiaircraft guns. But the others had grounded safely and disembarked their troops, and the Independents had paid dearly for their small success under the guns of the enemy's skiffs.

Of their own promised air support, there was no sign. Mal learned, much later, that the signal to execute the plan hadn't come to the hidden Independent fleet until the battle was joined on the ground and the Alliance fleet was already on its way to Hera. So, instead of meeting the enemy after taking possession of the orbital high ground as they'd planned, they'd been forced into a desperate battle in the space around the little world, a battle which favored the enemy and thus of necessity included every able Rim ship – including the ones originally intended to back up the foot sloggers.

The Independent forces on the ground, after their initial attack, had been forced on the defensive. They'd been prepared for the worst – out of habit, since the worst was what they'd got used to - and constructed a defense in depth, with elaborately fortified primary and secondary positions. But they had faced an Alliance force that, despite their losses at the beachheads, was still more than twice their size. And the Alliance air support, scant as it was, had nevertheless dominated the sky, and begun to chew holes in the Independent lines. By dusk, Mal and his men had received the first order to fall back. Under a sky lit with the flashes of fire both from the skiffs and the ground defenses, and streaked with the occasional comet trails of dying ships falling from the battle above, the Browncoats had been forced to withdraw - first to the rammed-earth strongpoints of their well-prepared fallback positions, then to the sandbag bunkers of their third line, then, finally, to the redoubt they'd built in a barren steep-walled canyon with the misnomer of Serenity Valley.

Defensively, Serenity Valley had its points. Its narrow confines and high walls made it an unhealthy place for the low-flying skiffs, not least because they had so little room to dodge. And the Alliance ground forces had found themselves unable to deploy their full strength across the narrow line, negating their numerical advantage. From strongpoints across the valley floor, the Browncoats had held the pass dividing the eastern and western halves of the valley like Horatius at the bridge, while marksmen sniped at the hapless purplebellies from spider holes in the canyon walls, turning it into a killing ground. The Valley would be a very hard place to dig them out of.

It was also, unfortunately, a very hard place to get _themselves_ out of. Retreating to Serenity Valley was an admission that the Independents had lost the initiative and that their objective was not victory, but survival. The ground forces' only hope was that the space battle would go to the Independents, or at least that some ships could be freed up to provide air support. The Khangs were almost shoulder-to-shoulder on the valley floor, begging to be strafed and bombed. The Independents could still snatch their desperately needed victory, if only the men on the ground could hold until the ships came.

The Alliance commander had sent an officer with a white flag to the dead zone between the opposing armies. At the time, Mal's squad had been had been holding a position high on the steep slope at the base of the valley's northern wall. He'd seen the truce party approach through his binoculars, and it had seemed to him that the boys in the crisp gray uniforms were a mite unhappy to be there. He'd seen the Alliance officers standing at the edge of the minefield while one of them shouted across to the Independents on the other side, and, after a short wait, get escorted in. He'd also seen the Khangs come back, with two of them carrying one of their number on a stretcher. He'd heard the story of the meeting later from men who were there, in the internment camp where he and Zoë had waited for the War to end.

The Alliance party had demanded a parley with the opposing commander to discuss the current situation. Though there hadn't seemed much to talk about, the Independent commander, Colonel Xian, had received him at his forward command post out of military courtesy.

Things hadn't stayed courteous long. The ranking Alliance officer in the delegation, a mere captain, had offered the 'rebel' forces fair treatment if they laid down arms immediately; otherwise, he couldn't be responsible for their fate if the Alliance troops had to pry them out of their holes like rats. The perfectly attired officer had looked around at the Colonel and his staff and offered them their own barracks, separate from the rabble outside, and hot water for bathing.

Colonel Xian had sent the Alliance general's white flag back with blood on it. He'd only broken the man's nose, but it was enough to make the general swear that he'd 'walk through' Serenity Valley, with his troops' boots sinking at every step into mud made with the rebels' blood.

The hwundan had damn near made good on his promise. The Independents liked to think Coreworlders were all pampered jibas, but their troops were tough and disciplined and well-equipped. The Alliance skiffs had massed at the edge of the minefield and bombarded it to detonate as many as possible; then the troops had rushed across. They'd taken casualties, from intact mines and Independent fire both, but they'd come on, re-formed on the other side, and advanced. The purplebellies couldn't bring their full force against the Independents in the trough of Serenity Valley, but their attack didn't weaken as it advanced, either; their huge reserve had allowed every Alliance trooper who fell to be immediately replaced. They'd taken their losses, closed ranks, and kept pouring fire into the Independent lines.

Meanwhile, the Independents were being ground down and forced back. The skiffs had hammered at the front line, and overflown it to strike deep into rear positions as well, tearing up the Independent command-and-control. Time and again, Mal's squad had fallen back to a foxhole or bunker already strewn with bodies. By the time his squad had reached the last strongpoint, a spot where the Valley suddenly narrowed and the ground rose up toward the canyon's rim, the entire chain of command between platoon leaders and the General Staff aboard the flagship was gone. The skiffs were pounding the Rim troops with impunity, because all the big stationary guns capable of dealing with them had been overrun.

The space battle had gone to the Alliance. The remnants of the Independent fleet, unable even to evacuate their ground forces, had withdrawn, to live and fight – and run – another day, and Command had ordered the troops to lay down arms as it departed.

Somebody should have told the graycoats the battle was over. Mal had watched, frozen with horror, as Alliance cruisers, tearing a page from the Independent playbook, had descended under power to the rim of the canyon to train naval weapons on the helpless Rimworlders below, turning the valley floor to flame. The Independent plan for breaking the offensive strength of the Alliance had been turned back on them.

Mal had talked to many people, in the camps and afterward, trying to figure exactly what had gone wrong, and how. But it seemed that the Independent defeat had been the result of a string of bad luck and bad decisions. The SAM batteries hadn't taken out the Alliance strike craft because the missiles to arm them had never been delivered, and so the crews had been forced to helplessly watch the landings with empty launchers. The fleet in hiding had been told to expect the Alliance assault force to approach from an entirely different direction, and so its scouts had been out of position to detect the invaders in time. And bad intelligence had misled the General Staff about the progress of the battle on the ground, to believe that the troops there were already beaten, and lingering above Hera would only cost the Independents ships they would soon need elsewhere.

It seemed that the Independent defeat had been the result of a string of bad luck and bad decisions, all right. But, as firm a believer as Mal Reynolds was in bad luck, the string of mistakes and errors by the Independent higher-ups had begun to seem like a string of _good_ luck for the Alliance that was too convenient to be accidental. Over the years, a darker suspicion had taken root and grown in his heart.

What if the leading lights of the Independent cause had never intended them to win? What if, all along, the Movement had been intended only to fight hard enough to pose a credible threat to the Core, as leverage in some negotiation, that Mal Reynolds and all who fought and bled with him were pieces to be sacrificed for other men's profit? That was the only reasonable explanation for the orders that had led to the defeat at Serenity Valley.

Badger had spoken of his efforts keeping the Movement in 'beans and bullets', but there'd been plenty of times they hadn't had either. They'd gone for days on soup made from boiled belts and wild greens, and Mal had had to use his rifle for a club to stop more than one cocky Khang. Plenty of times, it had seemed to him that they were being supplied just well enough to keep going, but not enough to win. And, after the War was done and that dark thought had taken firm hold of his heart, his memories of their supply problems had smelled of deliberation.

Mal would have very much liked to believe Badger – or Bertram Eaton, as some called him – was one of the men who'd profited from the Independent defeat. But there was no mistaking the thin-veiled bitterness in the man's voice when he talked about bad investments. Perhaps his high-bred partners had double-crossed him, fed him a bunch of promises and cut him out when it was time to divide the spoils. But somehow, he didn't think so. And that was bothersome, thinking of Badger as another victim of the War.

In his ear, Zoë said, "Does it really matter so much?"

He scoffed. It figured that Zoë would know what he was thinking just by watching him. Kaylee sometimes had that same uncanny knack, as if he was clear as glass to her. It seemed downright strange to him that Inara, trained to read men like books, would mistake his meaning so often. "I spose not," he said, "since we lost. We'd have come out on top, though, I wouldn't have liked owin my future to Badger and his army of thieves."

"Would you have felt like you owed them? He said they did it for their own reasons. And he might not have got the return on his investment he was looking for, but it doesn't look to have lost anything either."

"Didn't leave him scrambling just to get by, for sure."

The mate's eyelids lowered. "You're plenty moody right now, for a man stuffed with good food and a little tipsy on imported brandy."

"Maybe cause it came from somebody who paid for it by-"

Mal's com link to the ship beeped. Zoë and Jayne bent close as he brought it to his ear. "Ni hao?"

"_First off, Cap'n, don't worry,_" Kaylee's voice said tinnily. "_Nobody's hurt much, the damage is an easy fix, and the cops are here already._"

Mal blinked. Jayne said, "Well, that's reassurin."

Before Mal's mate could ask after her husband, he said, "Where is everybody?"

"_Simon and River are hid in the smuggler's compartments. I don't know if they really needed to, but Simon didn't want to take the chance with so many uniforms aboard. He looked the Shepherd over quick before he went in, says he'll be fine. Inara's tending him in his room. Wash is talking to the cops. Not Feds,_" she amended, "_those fellas in the black pajamas who walk up and down the street all the time. Their boss is here with them, askin questions. Seems okay. His people are helpin drag out the bodies so we can mop the deck._"

"Wo de ma," he muttered. "All right, what happened?"

"_It was that jiba who wanted to hire us, our last trip here. The one that Badger sent packing. Guess he come looking for payback._"

Mal refrained from correcting her about who had sent the merc captain packing. It seemed little Kaylee had taken an irrational liking to the little hundan, and wasn't likely to be argued out of it. He reflected, not unkindly, that a multitude of men must have stolen their way into the little mechanic's heart since puberty. "Go on."

"_Him and four of his crew stormed the ship, lookin for you and Jayne I think. The ramp was up, but they brought it down with a couple charges on the 'stender mounts, then forced the inner door open with some kinda jack. Didn't take em ten seconds, like they done it a hundred times, the dirty pirates._"

Reynolds's fist clenched around the com unit. "How'd you stop em?"

"_Well…_" She hesitated. "_I'm not rightly sure. I was up in the engine room, and I heard the ruckus and came down the stairs with Wash right behind me. But by the time we got there it was all over. Now that I think about it, it's kinda strange they didn't spread out from the hold, dontcha think? They didn't even take the forward companionway. They all ended up in the lounge outside the infirmary._"

Mal's jaw clenched. The only places the raiders could have been headed from the lower lounge were up the aft companionway to the dining hall and engine room, in which case they should have sent a man or two up the forward companionway as well … which made their likeliest objective further aft, to passenger quarters. "'Ended up.' They all trip on the hatch and fall down the stairs?"

"_No_." A pause. "_The Shepherd and River were in the lounge when they come in._"

Five to one odds, Mal mused, with River to protect as well; he wondered just how bad the strangely capable but elderly Bible-thumper had really been hurt. "You say he's okay?"

"_He's walking stiff, the poor old thing. He was sittin on the couch holding his leg when me and Wash came down the companionway, with them four pirates layin on the deck all around. Says he fell down, and one of those fellas fell on top of him, that's how he got hurt. But not a word about what brought down the other three. And one of them is real dead, that's why we got to break out the mops. I was there when Simon checked the Shepherd over, and it looks like when he fell, he landed awful hard on his knuckles. Simon says he's got an old bullet hole in his left hip, something that might resent a sudden workout._"

He decided to let that lie a bit; he had more pressing questions. "Your count's one short, little Kaylee."

"_The leader hightailed it, looks like. For sure he's not still aboard. The police chief has men headed for his ship right now. But he stayed to talk to you._"

Ten steps from the ramp, _Serenity_ stank of explosives and burnt metal, a smell too familiar from his military service. The security chief, Hoya, was waiting at its base with Wash, Kaylee, and two of his men. Mal had never met the man, but had no trouble picking him out, even though all three men were dressed in the loose black trousers and jacket that served Eavesdown's security force as a uniform. Officers all looked alike.

Mal offered a small bow. "Thank you for your help. Would never have guessed the man would hold a grudge so hard."

Hoya didn't return the bow. Mal told himself that wasn't necessarily a bad sign. Authority figures usually didn't when on duty. But the man's expression didn't change, either. And he swept the three of them with eyes that missed nothing. "Out for the evening?"

"Dinner with some business associates."

"Any chance these 'business associates' might have known about Bien's plans?"

Suspicion flared. If Badger had set this up…

_No._ "Doesn't seem likely. No gain." The little fixer had already had River in his hands, and given her back. There'd be no percentage in cutting a deal with Bo Bien just to get Simon in the bag as well.

The security man said mildly, "Captain, if you would, please coax your two missing crewmembers out of hiding. I'll need to speak to them." When Mal hesitated, he said, "I don't give a hump what they've done, as long as it wasn't done here. And no one in _my _service is going to talk to any outside authorities, no matter how large the reward."

Mal nodded. "Let's head inside then. I'd like to check on my people."

"The only injury was to your … spiritual advisor," Hoya said, with a bare twitch of an eyebrow as he moved aside to let Mal and the others inside. "I suspect that in his… struggles, he angered an old injury. This man, how long has he been aboard?"

Mal walked through the hold with the policeman at his heel, the rest of the crew trailing. He paused at the bottom of the catwalk stair, near one of the smuggler's holes, and glanced at Kaylee, who widened her eyes in signal. He noted that Hoya's two guards had remained at the bottom of the ramp, their backs to the hold. "About a year. If he ever had a destination, he never told us."

The man seemed to weigh Mal's words for truth. "Just a passenger, you say?"

"Seems half set on convertin the bunch of us. Doesn't preach any, though, so he's tolerable."

"Does he ever …" The man shook his head. "Never mind." He went on, "I've already spoken to your pilot and engineer. If they have other duties…"

Kaylee was eying the hatch leading to the lounge, looking nervous. Jayne passed the pie to the little mechanic with both hands. "Take this with you. Lorry, don't drop it."

Kaylee looked at Mal, who nodded. She headed up the catwalk stairs. Wash hesitated, trading glances with his wife. "Wash," said Mal, "you might want to follow her upstairs and make sure of her." With a final look at his wife, the pilot turned for the stairs. As the echoes of their footsteps faded from the hold, Mal said, "Now, what did you want them gone to say?"

"Just sparing the girl, mostly," Hoya said. "She didn't look well when we rolled the corpse over and she got a look at the size of the hole in him." He passed through the hatch, headed into the lounge. Mal nodded at Jayne, then the hide, before following. Zoë trailed him through the hatch.

"Careful," Hoya said. Here, the unaccustomed smell was that of gunpowder, and a faint battlefield odor of spilled human insides. The rug was gone, and the floor still wet. He stepped to the couch and picked an assault rifle off the cushions – a gun not part of the ship's inventory. He removed the magazine and presented it to Mal and Zoë. "They were all armed with these. You recognize the ammunition, I expect."

Zoë extracted a round and turned it in her fingers. "Frangibles," she said. "No ricochets, lots of soft-tissue damage."

"Yes. These fellows meant business." Hoya looked intently at Mal. "And, if I'm not very much mistaken, they were after your passengers. Do you know of any reason for that?"

Mal head-shrugged. "They might have been after some reward money."

Simon appeared in the hatchway, Jayne standing behind him and pretty much blocking the view beyond. "Sir. I'm not sure my sister is fit to answer questions right now."

"Sorry to hear that," the security chief said. "But I'll see her, just the same. Sister, you said?"

Simon's face blanked. Mal smiled inside at the boy's lapse. "Well, yes. That is, I …"

Hoya shook his head. "We needn't speak names, I've seen your picture. Say nothing more. Let me see the girl."

Jayne moved aside to reveal River, who cringed against him as she stared at the security man. "Bu tong dan dong yang," she whimpered.

Simon said, "It's the uniform. She's -"

"I've heard." Hoya studied her. "'Just the same, only different', eh?" He said gently. "How different, nien ching da? And how the same?"

"Want to make things better," she said. "They all want to make things better – people, rules, worlds. Pull up weeds, hammer down loose nails, shape and mold, erase and start over. Can't find a filter, can't…"

"Don't be afraid," the black-clad man said. "You have friends here, all friends. Come inside where it's safe."

From the hatch, the poor touched girl stared down the stairs at the floor of the lounge. "Wasn't a game."

"No, indeed," the man said. "But it's all right." He took the stairs slowly until he was standing before her. Then he bowed – not a hands-clasped Oriental bow, but the sort one might make to a deb at the Governor's Ball. He extended a hand, palm-up. Reflexively, it seemed, River placed her fingertips in his palm. His hand closed over her fingers, and he brought her knuckles to his lips. "Very pleased to meet you, miss. I would very much like to talk with you, but I think you've had enough excitement for one day. Perhaps your brother could take you to your room and rejoin us."

As the sibs disappeared into the passenger annex, Mal said, "How much do you know?"

"Much," Hoya said. "It's my job to keep track of things, after all. And a ship with this one's penchant for trouble merits extra scrutiny." The police chief eyed him as if he was a plateful of something unappetizing. "Truth, I've considered denying you further landing privileges, despite the Council's open policies towards… high-risk visitors, but you have friends who are persons of quality, and that tips the balance back in your favor."

"Friends?" Mal thought of their 'goodwill ambassador'. "Our Companion, you mean."

"Guild members have special status, of course. But your Companion's needn't extend to you; she can bring her shuttle down from orbit and land anywhere on Persephone. No, I was speaking of your patron. I've notified him of your trouble, and he's coming to handle things."

"Patron." Hoya could only be talking about one person. Zoë moved close, but Mal knew better than to say anything, not with their docking privileges on Persephone hanging by this man's friendship with the little fixer. "He's on his way?"

"I'm expecting him any minute."

Simon returned, and the top cop fixed his eye on the young doctor. "Doctor, where were you when the raiders reached the lounge?" In a lower voice, Hoya said, "You don't want to lie to me, young sir."

Simon glanced at the infirmary door. "In there."

"But you didn't stay in there, did you?" Before the boy could answer, the police chief said, "The lump under your ear hasn't finished swelling yet."

The doctor shrugged. "I've been taking instruction in self-defense from one of the crew. I thought I could help."

"And did you?"

"I… might have provided some useful distraction."

Hoya regarded Simon with cool eyes, and glanced down at the boy's hands; Mal followed the policeman's gaze, and saw a split on the top of the second knuckle on the right one. Hoya nodded. "All right. I'm ruling the killing of Moe Chin, late of the _Peregrine_, an act of self-defense. Your sister won't face charges."

"My…" Simon swallowed.

"You didn't know?" The man raised his eyebrows. "Only one shot fired, and her right hand smells very strongly of powder, as do her clothes. She doesn't handle firearms?"

Mal said, "Not generally," taking over the conversation to get Hoya's eyes off Simon and let the boy recover his wits. "She's got no training, and my people get a mite apprehensive when she gets a gun in her hand."

The man nodded. "It wouldn't have taken any training. He couldn't have been two feet away, judging by the powder burns around the entrance wound, and a hit anywhere would have been fatal with that load. As I said, an act of self-defense. Just one more entry in your ship's file, Captain." The police officer turned aft. "And now, I'll see your chaplain."

-0-

Inara and Book turned to look as the door to his room slid open, revealing a trim Oriental man of middle age wearing loose black trousers and matching jacket: the uniform of Eavesdown's constabulary. The man's eyes flicked from the Shepherd to the Companion and back.

Inara said, "Blessings, Commander Hoya. You're looking well."

"Quite well, Lady Serra. You're as lovely and courteous as ever."

"Commander, this is Shepherd Book. I suppose you know he was assaulted by the raiders. He's still a bit shaken, I'm afraid."

The man's face didn't change, but he made no effort to keep the amusement from his voice. "That an attack occurred is not in doubt. Determining who played the roles of victim and assailant is somewhat more difficult."

"The man who was killed. I'm certain it was an accident."

"As may be, Lady. I've already ruled it an act of self-defense regardless."

"Inara," Book said, "will you excuse us?"

Inara was too good a Companion not to recognize the limits of her influence. She rose without protest and left. After the panel slid closed, Hoya said, "She's very protective, Padre."

Book ignored the policeman's use of the archaic title. "She's quite attached to the ship and its people. I'm sure our friendship provides her with some amusing stories to tell when she visits her sisters at Chapter House."

"I doubt she tells any such stories. Any more than you, when you visit Southdown Abbey, or Londinium Temple, or Crac d'Ospitaler," Hoya said, listing the three major headquarters of Book's Order – including the one not known to the general public. The man took Book's only chair, leaving the old monk sitting on the bed. "I'm not here to question you about this little contest, though I'd certainly have liked to see it. I haven't come to make trouble for you. Rather, I've come to find out if you're going to make trouble for me." He crossed his legs. "Are you here… in an official capacity?"

"Very unofficial, Commander. I'm on sabbatical."

The man's eyebrows rose. "This seems a strange vacation choice, if you're looking for a change."

"It is a change, though. More than even you might guess." He added, "These people are bending the rules only as much as they need to get by. Surely Eavesdown is full of such. Business as usual."

"This ship carries a crew with a combined reward on their heads of almost half a million. That is most _un_usual. And it leads me to wonder how random your selection of this ship really is." He uncrossed his legs. "I take it they don't know about you."

"They suspect I'm not just an itinerant preacher. The ship's security man knows, but he's not likely to tell."

Hoya's eyebrow twitched. "Cobb? I can imagine he needed some convincing you were harmless." He leaned forward. "The details and outcome of this incident are of no great concern to me. The reason for it, however, is. As are the possible repercussions. Bien arrived just today, in great haste, from Foundry One."

"I heard about the trouble."

The policeman paused to regard Book keenly, then went on. "It's an open secret in Eavesdown that _Serenity_ is hosting fugitives with high prices on their heads. There's even speculation that it's a source of ship's income. But profiting by that knowledge by revealing it would be considered heinous behavior. I feel sure that girl could walk our streets with a knowledgeable escort and never fear for her safety, or worry that news of her presence here would reach official ears. But, as you pointed out, criminality comes in different degrees. Bien is a bad one. Now that his attempt on River Tam has failed and she's out of reach, he may try to sell what he knows to the Federals." He leaned back. "I'd like to know what a man in your… special position would advise I do about that."


	10. Shifts in the Landscape

Badger arrived at the ramp while Hoya was closeted with the Shepherd. He brought only two men: the big black with the dreadlocks who guarded the door to his inner office, and the older bald-headed fellow who seemed to be Badger's right hand. Both were armed. Badger was now wearing a 'business suit' more appropriate to Eavesdown, complete with derby. Mal and Zoë and Jayne waited just inside the doors; they had changed into working clothes as well. _Reckon we don't need to act like gentlefolk anymore_, Mal thought.

The little fixer nodded to his men, and they halted at bottom of the crippled ramp with Hoya's guards. Badger passed his derby to his attendant and walked up the ramp alone. At the top, he lifted his nose in the air. "What's that smell?"

"Explosives," Mal said. "Bien didn't want to wait for someone to answer the door."

"Where's the Chief?"

"Talking with the Shepherd. Seems he's the star witness."

Badger eyed him keenly. "That right? Any idea how soon they'll be out?"

"None. You planning on waiting?" Reluctantly, he said, "Spose you could take a seat in the lower lounge."

Badger's eyes got sleepy-looking with amusement. "That the lounge my man fetched a chair from last time I came aboard?"

"The same."

"Then I'll take that one." He moved toward the hatch. "It's broke in right. I could sit in it all day." He lifted his eyes and smiled wide. Mal followed his gaze and saw Kaylee smiling back from the catwalk. But she didn't come down; instead, she headed for the stairs leading up to the kitchen.

At the hatch opening, Badger raised his head to sniff again as he headed down the stairs, but made no comment. "This as far as they got?"

"So I'm told." Mal watched the little man settle into the tatty mustard-colored armchair. Instead of taking a seat, Mal and his mate stood on the other side of the low table, where they could watch the passage leading to passenger country and the little fixer at the same time.

Jayne glanced from Badger to Mal. "I got other stuff to do, you don't need me here."

"Go on, then," Mal said, surprised at the big merc's show of trust. He was surprised again when Jayne turned back the way they'd come, instead of heading up the aft companionway or into the passenger dorm where Simon and River were.

The three left in the lounge turned at the sound of steps in the aft companionway. Kaylee came carefully down the stairs, a tray in her hands. When she reached deck level, Mal saw that the tray contained a tall tumbler filled with pale yellow-green liquid. "Thought I'd offer our guest some hospitality," she said with a pointed look at her captain.

Zoë questioned him with her eyes. They both recognized the contents of that glass. Remembering the fancy food and drink they'd just had at Badger's, Mal wished he'd thought to beg something from Inara's private stock before the little fixer had arrived.

But Badger gave the girl a smile as she approached. "What's this?"

She set the tray down on the low table in front of him. "Nothin much, really, just my homemade, cut with some reconstituted fruit juice. But you can get used to it." She offered the glass.

Badger took it in hand, raised it to his chin, and sniffed. "Sure, you didn't cut it much." He took a sip, and his eyes widened. "That's not _bad_. Hoo." He took another sip and grinned. "Minds me of the stuff I used to drink in stir. Good memories." He lifted his glass in salute to the beaming girl and set it down, but not on the tray. "Thankee. Think I'd best go easy on it, though. Might need a clear head soon."

"Are you hungry? We got some dinner left."

Badger patted his stomach. "Still full from me own. I'm content as a cat in a sunbeam, little girl. Say, you wouldn't have some of this to spare? I'm thinking I might take it home, if you're agreeable."

"I'll get it right now." The little mechanic snatched up the tray and nearly skipped up the stairs.

Zoë said, "That was kindly."

Badger made a dismissive gesture. "It was doing right by them does right by you. Me own version of the Golden Rule. And good business practice."

Mal said, "Everything you do go back to business?"

"Gonna have that discussion again, are we?" Badger sat back and regarded the man standing on the other side of the table. "A good business is a good neighbor, Captain. Least, one that gets all its custom from word of mouth. I piss people off, I can't just close the hatch and take off for someplace don't know me, now can I?" He picked up the glass of 'shine and studied it, seeming to admire the color. "How much did you get for those imprinted supplements?"

"We did all right."

"How much?"

Mal said reluctantly, "Two hundred."

"Credit or platinum?"

"Platinum."

"Two hundred platinum," Badger said, as if savoring the words. "Who bought the goods?"

"We sold them at Whitefall."

"Whitefall." The little fixer paused to think. "Main settlement on Whitefall got hit by Reavers two-three days after you left, wiped out. You couldna been more than a day ahead of them."

"Reckon not."

"You hadn't jumped salt on me, Reynolds, you'd've got at least twice that, without burning a drop of fuel or risking your necks in Indian country."

"So you say. But it looked like the deal was dead as soon as you opened your mouth."

"No. Just… fluid, owing to the shift in our joint fortunes." He scowled. "But you showed me no trust. And then you attacked my character. That's a bad way to do business, Sarge. Least, it is in Eavesdown."

Mal shrugged. "Reckon we got different ideas about opening negotiations."

Badger sighed heavily. "Reynolds, I despair of making you an honest man."

Voices came to them from the passage leading to passenger country. Priest and policeman appeared, talking in low voices, but fell silent before they were properly in earshot. Badger bowed deeply to the police chief, and started talking in Chinese. Mal was conversational in Mandarin, or, rather, the pidgin spoken by most Occidentals, and could at least make himself understood to a native speaker. But Hoya and Badger's palaver was too fast and smooth for Mal to follow. Hoya gave the fixer a sideways wave of the hand, dismissing something Badger was saying, and they both smiled.

Shepherd Book nodded to Badger. "Captain," he said, "I need to run a small errand, but I expect to be back tonight."

"Take your time," Mal said. He glanced at Hoya. "Haven't got a warning not to leave town yet, but I'm sure it's coming."

"On the contrary," Hoya said. "I think you should make repairs with all haste, pick up some cargo, and find somewhere else to be for awhile. For your own safety." He moved toward the ramp. "I _will_ be in touch, however, if you're here tomorrow."

"Which reminds me," Kaylee said, standing halfway up the stairs leading from the galley. "We got a job offer from a real nice man while you were out." She continued her descent, gently swinging a bottle filled with clear liquid by its neck.

"That sounds mighty convenient," Mal said, sharing a look with his mate. "Not a doctor, I hope."

"Nope." She grinned. "A friend of mine I met at the Ball."

_Serenity's_ captain held back a smile. Proper job opportunities were still scarce at most of their ports of call, their offers being mostly of the hired-thug variety that Mal spurned. But on Persephone lately, decent-paying jobs had been falling into their laps at every landing. "Doesn't want me to hit someone or poke him with a sword, I hope."

She reached the bottom of the stairs; Badger, to Mal's surprise, stood like a proper gentleman as she joined the group. "Nope," she said again. "Cargo hauling. He's got his own ships, so I guess that means we'd be carting something he doesn't want to risk bein caught with. But he's a straight shooter, Cap'n. I bet anything he hires us to for'll be legal as cows, anyway." She turned to Badger and passed him the bottle. "He said you sent him. Thank you for that."

Badger turned to Mal, smirking. "Pick up your jaw, mate. Why else do you think you always find fair work here?" With his sleeve, he polished the little flamingo pin on his lapel. "Mind, I always take my cut, else the people I steer your way would think you had something on me."

Mal's jaw muscles flexed. "Why?"

"I'm your gorram patron, remember?" Badger stared up at him. "I wouldn't mind seeing you go hungry enough to eat your pride, and choke on it too. But you got people aboard I won't see in want if I have a say." He fussed with his lapels. "So, like it or not, you're crew. We're just going to have to bloody get used to it, both of us."

-0-

Unnoticed by the others, Book left the ship side-by-side with Hoya. But as soon as they were on the street, they parted with a nod and the Shepherd went his own way. At a public terminal, he dropped a token in the payment slot and punched in a com code.

The screen lit to show the head and shoulders of a young man in clerical garb. "Southdown-" He recognized Book. "Blessings, Brother Derrial."

"And to you, Brother Stern. Has Sister Risa returned to the Abbey?"

The boy's face blanked. "From the market, you mean?"

"Yes, of course." _Not used to lying, are you, Brother?_

"I'm not sure," the acolyte replied. "Let me try her room." The boy looked offscreen for half a minute; he might have been watching the call signal repeating without answer, or he might be sending a message, since his hands were offscreen as well. Finally, the boy said, "There's no answer, Brother. I'll leave a message that you called. Do you have a number?"

"I'm afraid not. No matter, it was nothing important." He disconnected just as his handheld Cortex link, which seldom left the duffel under his bed, sounded its 'incoming message' chime: a short passage from Romans. He replied with the next verse, deliberately misquoting. Immediately, another brief message appeared. He sent a one-character acknowledgement and shut off the unit.

He took a leisurely trip through the shabby little port as the twilight deepened and the shop lights took over the job of illuminating the streets. He examined the wares offered for sale at a dozen shops, sometimes retracing his steps to pay a second visit. He watched a number of street performances, smiling at the appropriate times and dropping a coin or two in the artists' collection plates.

After a time, his wanderings brought him to a quiet eatery just off the main thoroughfare, a signless place one might pass by unaware if he didn't already know it was there. The waiter appeared to also be the proprietor, a wizened man with a drooping Fu Manchu. Although the place was empty, Book requested a quiet table for two; the old man glanced at Book's collar and topknot and escorted him to a high-backed corner booth invisible from the entrance.

He barely had time to settle into the seat before Sister Risa slid in opposite, dressed in lay clothing. She took off her cap and set it on the bench beside her, freeing her straight ash-blonde hair to fall over her shoulders like a shining mantle. Behind her rose-tinted lenses, her eyes were grave. "You didn't need to walk over all of Eavesdown, Brother. I could tell you weren't being tailed after a hundred yards. That limp looks painful."

"Couldn't pass up a chance to practice my fieldcraft, Sister. I won't be on sabbatical forever." The waiter brought two handleless teacups and a pot and left without inquiring about their order. Book lifted his cup and sipped. "Besides, a little extra caution is in order. It wouldn't do for the wrong people to get a fix on your comings and goings from the Abbey. I presume that's why you're out of uniform?"

She nodded. "And because I don't want 'Sister Risa' to become known as a regular in Eavesdown. Those same people may want to know who I'm seeing." She raised her tinted glasses and seated them atop her head. Risa's eyes were light gray, and her brows scarcely darker than her hair. As a boy, Book had had little exposure to pale-skinned people; when he had met Risa at seminary school, he had mistaken her for an albino. The young girl had indignantly set him right, saying that she was 'Scandinavian', whatever that was; after four decades, he still didn't know. He'd found her rather exotic, and had prayed more than once during his adolescence over his attraction towards her.

He studied his old friend. Even from no farther away than a table's width, Risa could easily pass for a woman half her age. Her figure was trim, and her bearing lithe. Her skin was smooth and clear, with just the faintest lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. With her hair down, the silver streak was barely noticeable, and might easily be taken for a fashion statement of some sort. Certainly no one looking at her would guess she was nearing sixty. _Clean living and a clear conscience, no doubt._ Then he examined her clothing: modest, but form-fitting and smart. "I like the outfit."

She nodded. "More durable than it looks. Not drab, but unremarkable colors and conservative cut. Solid middle-class wear for this part of the world. Something that would be hard to describe later."

"I wasn't evaluating it as a disguise. I mean, it looks very nice on you."

"Oh." She smiled. "Derrial. A compliment, really? Next, I suppose, you'll be telling me I'm pretty."

"I thought you were a lovely girl the day I met you, Risa. And you've become a beautiful woman."

She scoffed. "Oh, _thank_ you," she said in mock irritation. "After that little stroke, I'll have to do a penance tonight, and meditate on the perils of vanity." She sipped her tea. "Teasing. I shouldn't disparage His gifts, I know. My looks have been useful more than once. I just wish I made better use of them. Poor stewardship on my part, but trying to steer a man by enticing him is extra risky for a nun. Would that the Council had taken your suggestion seriously."

"Which one?"

She rolled her eyes. "The one about Companion training for Sisters of the Order. Those women know how to turn a man off and on at will, and do it without offending him – or injuring him." She took another sip. "Alas, the Elder Fathers feared for our maidenly souls should we be educated in such whorish wiles. Apparently beating information out of our targets is more virtuous than batting our eyelashes at them." She set her cup down. "You've got me doing it again."

"What?"

"Talking shop. Which we're not supposed to do with you. Orders from His Excellency the Bishop himself."

He scoffed and raised his cup. "Risa, I need some information. About the business on Foundry One."

The smile dropped off her face. "Operational security, Derrial." She picked up her tea again and sipped, hiding behind the cup. "I should never have told you about it."

"Your indiscretion may have saved the life of one of my flock."

She set the cup down with a little _clunk_. "That sounds so strange, coming from you. 'My flock.' Are you really building a ministry? I thought your shipmates weren't churchgoers - bereft of faith, even."

"Well, the captain's a man who's turned from God, that's certain - rather, of any God embraced by a church. I'd call him disaffected. But he has a good heart, and follows a moral code of sorts. Another of the ship's company is a Buddhist, but she's a wonderful person and strong in her faith. As for the others, who can say? I really don't know if I'm strengthening their faith. But I'm sure they're strengthening mine."

She nodded. "He was right, then." She took her cup in both hands, raised it to her lips, and smiled behind it. "He's been hinting that he'll be setting my feet on the road next."

Book scoffed. "I think you'll be Southdown's first abbess first. How could he think _you've_ lost your faith?"

"I've known him almost as long as you, Brother. He's never misjudged a person. If he says I need to go on a pilgrimage to refresh my spirit, I won't question. I'll leave my weapons behind and find some quiet corner of the 'Verse to settle, and renew my relationship with God." She leaned back with her cup against her chest. "All right, I'm hooked. What's this about your people being in danger?"

"The limp isn't from the walk, Risa. You know a mercenary leader by the name of Bo Bien?"

Her face closed. "When?"

"Just this evening."

"Tien shiao duh. His drive couldn't have cooled off yet. What happened, and what was he after?"

Book verbally sketched the merc captain's connection to his folk, related the set-to earlier, and offered an assessment of the man's likely next actions, all in under a minute.

Risa nodded. "He arrived at Foundry One just before the staged labor riot was supposed to begin. We think he was hired to make sure the right people got killed in the uprising." She shook her head. "The sooner _that_ one comes to Judgment, the readier he'll be. Can you imagine what further burdens will be on his soul ten or twenty years from now?"

"Jail would keep him from mischief almost as well as death."

She leaned forward again and stared into his eyes. "We're not jailers, Brother."

The way she said it raised hairs on Book's neck. He had known the woman before him since they'd been teenagers. For over forty years, they'd worked and studied and trained together at the Temple and the Abbey, and done all manner of 'missionary' work together; undercover, they'd played business partners, mortal enemies, criminal and victim, even lovers. He trusted her with his life. But there was a shadow on her soul that the light of trust and friendship would never banish. _Perhaps that's what Bishop Sato means to free her of. _He said, "I need to know about his stay on Foundry One. I'm not asking you to give up any secrets, but you may have information that's difficult to get elsewhere. And… I might need more than information. Will you help me, Risa?"

She sighed. "How could I not?"

-0-

Badger stayed a bit longer, seated in the battered armchair as if it was a throne, and made small talk, mostly with Simon and Kaylee, while he drained his glass of 'shine. Mal was surprised by the young doctor's easy acceptance of the little fixer, who shared too many eye-to-eye smiles with Kaylee for the captain's comfort. But Mal couldn't help noticing how often Simon cast an eye toward the passenger dorm, clearly apprehensive about the prospect of a visit from his sister.

Finally, Badger picked up his bottle and took his leave. Mal and Zoë escorted him to the ramp. At the sawtoothed inner doors, Mal said, out of the little redhead's hearing, "Doesn't seem likely we'll ever be friends, Badger. But I reckon if we can trust each other enough to do business, a certain amount of respect should come with the deal."

Badger stopped. "Well, isn't that bloody generous of you."

"But," Mal went on as if Badger hadn't spoken, "this ship won't take another job from you before I know what kind of return you're lookin for from your investment." He gave a meaningful glance back to the hatch between hold and passenger lounge, where Kaylee stood smiling after them. She saw them looking back and gave a little wave.

The little fixer smiled in return and raised his hand in farewell. Voice low, he said, "I'm getting more return than I was ever looking for, this mo."

"And what about River? What business are you doing with her?" _And what do you want in return?_

"Whatever, it's nothing to your fortunes or your safety, so it's none of yours."

"I'll be the judge of that."

"Judge away. I don't chatter about my clients' affairs." Badger faced Mal squarely. "What is it about me that bunches up your knickers, Sarge? You even know?"

Instead of answering, Mal said, "I owe you a favor. I didn't ask for it, and I know you're not helping for my sake, but I'm beholden just the same. That don't mean I won't step between you and somebody I'm responsible for."

"Fang shin, Sarge. Only worthless men got no debts to repay." The little fixer turned away, towards the exit. The man holding Badger's derby polished the crown on his sleeve.

Mal said, "Badger."

Badger paused and turned partway back. "Eh?"

"The War. You wouldn't be the only one got cheated." Mal glanced at Zoë, standing silent a pace away. "Only, for us, it wasn't an _investment_."

Badger was still a long moment. Finally, he said, "So that's it, eh? You figure it was all just a horse race to me, and I'm just miffed because I put my money on the wrong nag? Think that's all I did during the War, while you and yours did the real work? That why you offer me _respect_ like it's an act 'o charity?" He turned back to face the captain fully. Mal saw the little fixer's unencumbered hand curl into a fist before he deliberately relaxed it and stuck it into his pocket. "Let me tell you a thing or two about that. I told you I near turned out me pockets in the War. But I got back every penny I put into that lottery. We all did, and right away too, because it was run by honest scofflaws like me. Was after that I went broke. See, I was the Independent Army's rutting quartermaster, too."

Badger's two companions stilled in a manner that spoke of violence. The little fixer ignored them, his attention all on Mal, wearing an expression that made Mal wish Darcy was here to settle her boss before somebody got hurt. Then something changed, and Badger rocked back on his heels. "Not just me, o' course. More like an army of us, all petty criminals - back-alley traders who knew the right people, and career smugglers who found or bought safe routes to and from. There's more to beating a blockade than sneaking past the pickets with a full hold, leastways if you want to do some good. You've got to know what your lads need before they need it, and find someone who's got it, and work out a way to get it to them. Like I told you, most of the Independents' military hardware come from the Core side of the border – dirty dealings all, and not with the nicest of people. They were selling out their own side, after all; how much trust could _we_ put in em? Niska was only one of them, and not the worst. You might have traded fire with your share of rude strangers, Balls and Bayonets, but I walked unarmed into many a room not knowing if I'd walk back out again. But I got the deals."

The little fixer began to pace across the width of the bay, while his men watched, the big black's scowl switching from him to Mal and back again. "And _that's_ how I went broke. The suppliers and blockade runners were taking big risks, and not inclined to work for promises. But they knew if _I_ promised a man payment and he did the job proper, he got paid, even if it came out of me own pocket. Plenty o times, whole shiploads of goods moved on just my word." He stepped close to Mal, almost touching chests, and looked up. "My _word_. But the _patriots _holding the Independent purse – the purse _I_ filled – those honorable gents were a smidge slow to reimburse once they had the goods in hand. After a while, the ships stopped moving because I couldn't make any more promises. Mind, the money was still coming in. But nobody seemed to know where it was going. My guess is a few blokes saw where things were headed and took out a little insurance. By War's end, all I had left was me mum's house, Howard's old office at the Docks, and my people.

"I busted my hump for the Independents. Risked me life, bartered my honor, and threw away me fortune. And what come of it? The Alliance flag flies over every rock in the 'Verse. The same smug barstids sit behind the desks and up on the benches, just mouthing different lies in their speeches. More ships travel 'twixt the worlds than ever before, never mind that most of them got company logos on the hulls. Commerce is way up, and me business is better than ever. I made back what I lost in half the time it took to make it. So what did I do it for, eh? What?" He glanced at the bootlace wound around Zoë's neck, then circled Mal, curling his lip at the captain's duster. "So a bunch a losers could strut about in tatty bits o' their old uniforms and look down on me and mine… cause _they_ fought." Sarcasm filled his voice, heavy and hard as stone. He passed the bottle to his baldheaded companion, who looked at it dubiously. He accepted his derby and twirled it between his hands as he set it on his head. Then, with a final dark look from Badger's dreadlocked bodyguard, the three of them passed out into the shadowy, bustling street.

-0-

The little personnel hatch atop the center section of _Serenity's_ hull opened, and Jayne climbed out, lifting Vera through ahead of him. He was careful not to bump the fancy Callahan battle rifle against the hatch's rim; he knew the big scope he had mounted on its rail was dialed in proper, and he didn't want to bend it up.

He closed the hatch behind him and crouched low, keeping out of sight from the galley windows as he moved forward. There was a lawman aboard, after all, who likely wouldn't approve of Jayne's solution to _Serenity's_ little problem. He went up the gooseneck, keeping low, until he was near its top, just back of the bridge windows. As long as he stayed on his belly or knees, the streets below were out of sight beneath the hull, which meant no one down there would be seeing him either. Those streets, narrow and walled with two-story buildings, were dim with shadow already, but up here there was still plenty of light to shoot by if you had a good enough scope. A quarter mile to the south, the nose of a ship stuck up above the rooftops and the hulls of the cargo haulers surrounding it.

Jayne had taken trips aboard tailsitters like _Peregrine_, and didn't care for them much. He didn't like the way all the floors became walls and walls turned into floors once the ship hit dirt, and you had to swing down all the furniture to new positions and rearrange the rooms. And it was creepifying to look at ladders poking sideways out of the walls. It was a fengla way to build a ship, at least one that regular folks lived and worked on. But you could install bigger drives if you fitted them into stationary mounts in the rear, rather than on pivoting lateral extensions like _Serenity's_. Tailsitters weren't nimble, but they could haul heavy loads, and without cargo they were plenty fast. Jayne figured a ship that would take you somewhere in a hurry – or away from somewhere in a hurry – was just the ticket for a lieu mang like Bien.

From a prone position, he looked through his sight at the other ship, his sight picture traveling from the spade-shaped nose with its bristle of antennae down the flattish curve of the hull until he found the bridge windows. _Had a fifty-fifty chance they'd be turned this way; guess my luck is holding._ He stepped up the magnification until he could see the inside of the control room, which was presently empty. That was fine with Jayne. But if Bien meant to rat out the Tams, he wouldn't be walking past the guards Hoya had planted around his ship to do it. He'd have to wave the Feds, and that meant a visit to the bridge. That was fine with Jayne too.

He lay watching the ship through his scope, taking his eye from the eyepiece briefly to rest it and then returning. He felt a hunter's stillness settling over him, an unthinking patience that took no notice of the passage of time. He was a weapon focused on a kill zone. Once that zone contained a certain target, he would pull the trigger, and the hunt would be over.

The thick glass of the windows was worrisome. He thought a round from the Callahan could punch through it – he'd done for the windows on a space station once with it. But then again, those had been built just to hold back vacuum, not withstand the stresses of re-entry. What fretted him more was the possibility that the glass's refractive properties might mess up his aim, make him think Bien was half a yard left or right of where he really was. Jayne doubted he'd get a second shot at the pirate if the first missed. Jayne was looking through the window at a slight angle; which way would that throw the image off? His hands made small adjustments, anticipating the merc captain's entrance.

It grew too dark to see clearly; the bridge became a cave's mouth, sprinkled with small lights from the controls. Jayne thumbed a switch on the scope, enabling its low-light capability, and the ship's interior reappeared, though seeming somewhat flatter, the colors fainter than before. The air took on a chill; he wished, briefly, that he'd thought to bring a coat.

He worried a little more. What if the hwundan had already made his call? No, he decided, if that were the case, the Feds would already be here. The pirate captain was still weighing his options, that was all; before much longer, he'd be up here to send a wave. All Jayne needed was to wait for it and hope Bien didn't decide to sleep on the problem first.

Feeling thirsty, he took a single sip from his canteen, running it around his mouth before swallowing. He didn't want to fill his bladder, because he didn't intend to leave his perch before the job was done. No light remained in the sky but the nav lights of aircraft, beacons on the skyscrapers surrounding and lights from their windows, and a sort of ghost-light reflected from the lamps below into the hazy sky. He brought his eye back to the scope just in time to see a shaft of light fall into the control room from an open door.

He took a slow, deep breath, willing himself to relax. A shadow fell across the consoles: a figure in the doorway. A man entered the bridge – not Bien. The pilot, Jayne guessed, by the man's Wash-like familiarity with the room and its controls as he dropped into a seat and began fiddling with a bank of switches. Disappointment rose in the big merc until a second shadow fell across the station.

Bien.

Jayne flexed stiff fingers without breaking his sniper's rest. He stared intently through the scope at the man he'd come up here to kill.

Bien spoke. The man nodded and passed Bien a microphone. Jayne took his finger off the trigger guard and stuck it inside, feeling for the trigger.

Light exploded white-hot in his eye. He grunted and yanked his head back from the scope just as the thunderclap of an explosion reached him. He looked across a quarter mile of darkness towards _Peregrine, _which wasn't all that dark anymore. Spots swam in front of him, but he closed his right eye, the one he'd had to the eyepiece, and they vanished. Instead, he saw a fountain of sparks cascading down _Peregrine's_ hull, illuminating it dimly before they faded out. In the unseen street below, the crowd sounds paused, and then resumed, higher-pitched. He put his un-dazzled eye to the scope and looked up at the other ship's nose, and beheld a cluster of glowing stubs that had recently been _Peregrine's_ antenna array. _Guess he won't be waving the Feds tonight._

He dropped the sight picture to the bridge. All the lights were out, but the space was bathed in flickering light from a fire inside the room somewhere. No one was in sight. Smoke wisped out of a hole in the window – not a bullet hole: it was too big, and oval-shaped, with a dribble of melted glass trailing down the lip like wax from a candle.

There was a similar hole in the steel wall on the other side of the control room. Jayne was half sure that, if he was to circle around to the other side of the tailsitter, he'd see a hole where the gorram beam had come out.

Where was the shooter? Lining up the two holes made for a narrow cone of likely sight lines, but there was nothing closer than some city towers at least a mile away to the north.

_That wouldn't matter_, he thought. _Not to a beamer. All you need is a good scope, a solid rest, a steady hand, and lots of power_.

One of the distant towers was now dark.

His eyesight was clear now; he returned to his scope and examined the windows again. After a moment, he saw the pilot rise into view, coughing.

Jayne had once seen a family that had been forced to take shelter in their cellar while their house burned to the ground above them. After things had cooled enough, they'd forced the buried trapdoor open and dug their way out through the smoking rubble. Jayne was reminded of those folk just then, as he watched the man looking around in a daze, swaying and blinking, his hair going every which way and his eyes too white in his soot-streaked face. He glanced around the floor, and found something that widened his eyes still more and turned his mouth into an _O. _He fell to his knees and was out of sight again.

By now, the streets must be full of people looking hard at high places, Jayne thought. He back-crawled until he was sure he could rise to a crouch unobserved, then skedaddled for the hatch.

-0-

Standing on the deck of _Serenity's_ lower bridge, Shepherd Book pressed his cheek against the glass to watch the firelit plume of smoke jetting from _Peregrine's_ bridge window. Above him, Wash called down, "Do you _see_ that?"

"I surely do," he called back. The smoke was thickening and turning darker. One of the other ship's window panels popped and fell toward the street as flames licked out of the opening. "I'm fair certain half of Eavesdown does, too." From this window, he could see along several streets; many people were watching the stricken ship and talking excitedly. More than a few were staring hard at _Serenity_ as well. "Should have seen it coming," he muttered. "Girl never was one for half measures."


	11. Back to Business

Chief Hoya returned early the next morning. Kaylee had fabricated new extender mounts overnight at the captain's urging, and was at the bottom of the ramp welding them onto the hull. She flipped up the visor of her welding mask for a breath of fresh air, noticed the crowd parting down the street, and saw the police chief striding briskly along with half a dozen of his men, headed straight for _Serenity_.

She backed into the hold and punched at the ship's com. "Cap'n, we got company."

"_I know_," Mal said. "_He called ahead. I'd have been expectin him anyway. Tell him I'm on my way_."

She said, "Are we in trouble?"

"_When ain't we?_"

The police chief appeared at the bottom of the ramp. "Fetch your captain, girl," he said.

She swallowed, hoping she didn't look as nervous as she felt. Mr. Hoya didn't seem nearly as friendly today, and Kaylee thought it a very bad sign that he wouldn't step aboard, demanding instead that the captain come outside to meet him and his squad. "He's on his way, sir." She couldn't help adding, "We don't know anything about it, honest."

The constable's blank face and silence told too much. Passersby hesitated; when Hoya and his men took no notice, they stood at a short distance, watching.

Kaylee's eye was pulled to the street by the sight of Badger, one hand on his derby, slipping through the crowd unescorted to join the group. He gave Hoya a quick bow, and started to speak, but Hoya stopped him with an upraised hand.

The captain strode through the hold, eyes on the police chief. He wore work clothes but no gun belt. As he drew even with her, he gave her shoulder a little squeeze and stepped down. He raised his hands even with his bottom ribs, waiting for a sign to raise them further or drop them.

Hoya said, "Put your hands down, Captain. I'm quite sure you're harmless, at present." When Mal hitched his thumbs in his waistband, the man went on in a voice easily heard by all the gawpers nearby, "Captain Reynolds. Are you in possession of a Westus ATR or equivalent? Say, an Osawa, Mark Seven or Eight?"

Mal said gravely, "Sir, we're tradin folk, not mercenaries. We bear arms to protect ship and crew and cargo, that's all. We got a decent assortment of small arms, true. But we got no use for crew-served antitank weapons."

"An Osawa wouldn't necessarily need a second man. You could do without the backpack power cell if you had a large stationary source near enough to run a cable to. Say, the main bus of a spaceship."

Keeping his voice level and patient, the captain said, "Maybe so. But, even if I could lay hands on one, the cost of it would keep us fueled for a year. An Osawa's not something you buy in case you got a use for it someday."

"Badger," Hoya said. "Do you have access to any such weapons?"

Badger glanced at the silent crowd. "I might be able to lay hands on one."

"Have you done so, or enabled anyone else to do so, in the recent past?"

"No. And I don't know of anyone who has."

Chief Hoya's expression didn't change, but his next words were a lot less stern. "Let's all go inside, then. There are things that need be discussed." With a gesture, he bade his men remain behind and walked up the ramp, Badger and the captain following. Since nobody had told her not to, Kaylee decided to tag along.

Badger said, "Thank you for that, old friend."

"For all the good it will do," Hoya replied.

Mal's brow wrinkled. "Eh?"

Badger gave him a look Kaylee recognized: the same one River gave Simon when she was making small of her brother's intelligence. "Those aren't the kind of questions you ask a suspect out in the street unless you're already sure of the answers. The Chief just told all of Eavesdown that our word's good enough for him."

They reached the catwalk stairs. Mal said, "If you don't mind a little climb, we could do this at table in the galley."

The police chief put a hand on the rail. "Lead on, Captain. Do you have coffee?"

"Uh, we're tea drinkers, I'm afraid."

Mostly, Kaylee thought, because it was a good deal cheaper. She split off and took the passage leading to the starboard shuttle.

Inara didn't do much business on Persephone anymore. She got plenty of offers, but politely refused almost all of them; she'd told Kaylee that she found her increased celebrity among the Persephone upper class embarrassing these days, since much of it was generated by a perverse fascination with the Wing affair. "One gets so tired of smiling at the same ridiculous comments and questions," she'd said. Kaylee thought maybe it was just harder to pretend among this particular pack of zang shang liu after Wing had dropped his mask. Whatever the reason, their Companion was presently parked in the shuttle bay instead of out fattening her bank account.

The heavy airlock was open; Kaylee knocked at the thin decorative panel that closed off the inside. "Nara?" She slid it aside without waiting for an answer.

"Kaylee?" Inara appeared from the curtained opening separating the pilot controls from the rest of the interior. "What's wrong?"

"Can you spare some coffee?"

-0-

The galley provided seating for eight: a heavy plank table surrounded by an assortment of mismatched chairs. Only one had arms, and Chief Hoya settled into it immediately. "Captain, is there anyone else you wish to bring to this meeting? Anyone else with an interest in this affair?"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a crowd appeared at both entrances: Zoë, Wash, Simon and Jayne from the forward hatch; Kaylee and Inara from the aft, bearing trays with a fancy tea service and a number of packages. Mal said, "Ah, we're shy a seat. Maybe…"

"No need," Inara said, gliding towards the food prep area. "Coffee in a few minutes, Commander. I'll be serving, not sitting." She glanced at Mal. ""Assuming I'm privy to the conversation."

"Ship's business is your business," he said, even though it wasn't strictly true: he generally tried to insulate their Ambassador from the shadier aspects of their efforts to make a living. But whatever was about to be palavered didn't look to be something any of them should be in the dark about.

Hoya watched Inara assemble her makings. "Lady. You brought your own water?"

"Nothing against _Serenity's_ recycling systems. I use ship's water for tea. But coffee is a rather less forgiving brew, and requires a certain amount of artistry. Water quality is just one thing that affects its flavor."

The policeman smiled. "Such as the fineness of the grind, and the temperature of the water."

She paused. "Commander, are you a connoisseur, then?"

"As the saying goes, I don't know art, but I know what I like. I have a friend who is knowledgeable, and pours a fine cup." He looked over the assembled crewmembers as they took seats. "Two missing."

Kaylee said, "The Shepherd's still in his cabin. I could call."

"No need," the policeman said. "I'm sure he's weary from yesterday's … exertions. What about your sister, Doctor?"

"Wherever she is, I'm sure she can hear us if she wants to."

Hoya raised his eyebrows at that, but just folded his hands and began talking. "After the attack here, I ordered a squad to the _Peregrine_, Captain Bien's ship. They surrounded it and prevented anyone from entering, but that was all." He looked at the captain. "My people are competent peacekeepers, but I wouldn't want to send them in to take a ship by force that was defended by experienced killers. I had good reason to believe the ship wasn't going anywhere, so I thought it best to let things develop."

The air filled with the smell of coffee grinding: Inara stood behind the cooktop with a hand grinder, smoothly turning its crank. The mood in the room lifted somewhat from the pleasant aroma, and Mal silently thanked her. To Hoya, he said, "Why would you think he wouldn't skedaddle?"

"Because I've interviewed the survivors from _Peregrine's_ raiding party. Their accounts of the fight are a bit disjointed, but they agree in the important details and are supported by their injuries, which lends credibility to the rest of their testimony. They told me that they'd eaten nothing but hardtack from the emergency locker on the trip to Persephone." He leaned back and crossed his arms, waiting for it to sink in.

Mal said, "He didn't provision the ship before he left port."

The police chief nodded. "So I guessed. I made inquiries, and learned that Captain Bien ran into serious misfortune at Foundry One. The authorities station-locked his ship as soon as it docked and took him and his people into custody. His accounts were seized, and I'm sure he'll have to petition a court and show where the money came from to get them released."

"Which means he'll never see those credits again," said Badger.

"Likely. He left dock as soon as he was released, without fueling or provisioning his ship. Buying his way free emptied his cash box, I surmise. He came back to Persephone on fumes, looking for revenge and quick cash. You see, he thinks his troubles are your doing, Eaton."

Badger's eyebrows rose. "Me."

Hoya shrugged. "You didn't part on good terms. And you did threaten each other, so I hear."

"So he thinks I peached on him," Badger said, mouth twisting. "That's two people on Persephone think I'd sink that low. You're in fine company, Reynolds."

Unfazed, Hoya went on, "Very shortly after _Peregrine_ landed, Captain Bien sought news of your ship, and learned that the three of you had disembarked and taken a shuttle out of Eavesdown." Hoya raised his eyebrows at Mal's scowl. "It wouldn't have been difficult, Captain. You know how crowded Eavesdown is during daylight hours - and well into the night, in certain parts at least. A hundred people must have watched you leave. It was just a matter of asking around.

"Once he realized – believed, rather," he said with hooded eyes, "that all of _Serenity's _crew capable of putting up a fight was off to town, he saw an opportunity. He assembled a team and breached your ship. Once inside, he sent the rest of his men aft to secure the passenger quarters while he took the catwalk stairs to the bridge. His part in the plan, I'm told, was to disable your com and lock passengers and crew in their quarters from the bridge."

"Wouldn't have worked," Mal said. "We cannibalized a lot of unnecessary gizmos on the bridge. I never did see a need to manage the lights and door locks from there."

"Well, he'd have done for your wave equipment, anyway. Then his men would take the back stairs, secure the engine room, and move forward to meet him. Very smooth. With the ship in hand, he could take what he wanted and be gone without any alarms being raised. But I'd guess he heard the fighting in the lounge and knew his surprise was gone, and had second thoughts about a one-man assault on the upper level."

Mal shrugged. "Why take over the ship? Why not just snatch Simon and River and go?"

Hoya shook his head. "They weren't after the Tams, Captain. Bien and his men were here for your mechanic." He glanced at Badger. "You see, this was meant as an attempt to squeeze your patron by kidnapping his sweetheart."

Badger exploded. "_Gor!_ We just talked in the gorram street."

"And exchanged gifts," Mal said, trying hard to keep a straight face as the little fixer turned scarlet, and Kaylee stared at the table, and Simon's face turned to stone. "Bout all it takes to end up married, some places."

Inara appeared beside the seated policeman with a laden tray. "Ladies and gentlemen, coffee." She set a cup in front of Hoya and filled it. "Honey? Sugar? Or some cream, perhaps?"

Before Mal could truly wonder where she'd laid hands on said dairy product, Hoya said, "Thank you, just black." He sipped. "Excellent."

The Companion smiled and began to deal out the other cups; Mal noted that she passed him by to serve Badger second.

Hoya took another sip, then went on. "I'm sure you know that _Peregrine_ was attacked last night. Just before midnight, their bridge was fired on by someone with a very heavy microwave laser rifle. A single shot, probably, but it was enough to drill a hole right through her hull and out again. And the EMP caused an overload that fried all her external input-output devices – rather spectacularly - and a great deal more. My men report the ship went dark and silent before the fire on the bridge went out, and has been so ever since."

Wash spoke up as he accepted a cup. "No fan noises from the vents?"

"No. Their climate control isn't functioning. And the datalink to their 'parking meter' was severed as well. That leads me to believe all the ship's electronics are slagged."

Kaylee said, "What about the reactor? Did the failsafes-" She stopped. "Guess they did, we're all still here."

"I've prevailed upon a ship parked near _Peregrine_ to use their instruments. From what we can tell, the reactor is on standby. There are no hot spots or other evidence of power use detectable anywhere on board._ Peregrine_ is a hulk."

"Must be mighty uncomfortable in there," Mal said. No fresh air or water, food gone, isolated in the dark... Even after the fire, _Serenity_ hadn't been hurting half as bad as _Peregrine_ was now; someone had done a fine job on the pirate ship. He sipped his coffee, and frowned at the black liquid. He didn't understand what all the fuss was about; his cup tasted like coffee, the same as he boiled up himself on the rare occasions they were prosperous enough to stock coffee powder.

The police chief nodded. "I expect they'll give themselves up quietly before long."

Simon raised his cup to his lips. "Was anyone hurt?"

"We don't know, Doctor. I wouldn't have wanted to be on the bridge when it happened, certainly, even if the sniper wasn't aiming at anyone." Hoya cradled his cup, apparently savoring the warmth. "If they have injured, I would expect that will hurry their decision."

Badger tipped up his cup and drained it. "Any idea who did it?"

"Several, actually." The policeman gave Mal half a smile. "Despite the recent hostilities, _Serenity's_ crew was never at the top of my suspect list, Captain. The entry and exit holes in the ship indicate that the sniper's position was at least twenty degrees westward of _Serenity's_ relative to the _Peregrine_, at a distance of at least fifteen hundred meters, and slightly higher than the bridge as well. I'd guess one of the city towers to the north of the pads. Many are nearly deserted at that hour, and their load panels would be easy to tap to power the gun. Bien has a handful of enemies far more likely to have an Osawa in their gun locker, and I can easily see one of them taking the opportunity to strike at him while official eyes are fixed elsewhere." He sipped again. "However, close-mouthed as they are to outside authorities, Eavesdown residents do love their gossip. Mere facts won't convince them that they haven't witnessed further proof of how unwise it is to fuck with you people."

Silence.

"Jen dao mei," Mal said. _Just our rutting luck._

Badger looked thoughtfully down into his empty cup. "Doesn't have to be a bad thing. Might find a way to turn it to advantage." He smiled as Inara appeared with the pot and refilled his coffee. "Xie xie."

Hoya drained his cup and accepted a refill as well. "I'm pleased to see that you're repairing your ship with all haste. When do you expect to leave?"

Mal shifted in his seat. Something about this just didn't sit right. It seemed as if Hoya was solving his problem by running the wrong folks out of town. Not that _Peregrine_ was going anywhere now, but sending Mal and his people off had clearly been the top cop's intent at first meeting as well. "We'll have cargo by noon. If I know Kaylee, repairs'll be done by then. We'll lift as soon as it's settled in the hold."

"Good. The sooner you're gone, the better." Hoya looked over the rim of his cup at Mal. "In case Bien's new friend isn't done with him."

It hit him then. "You knew somebody'd be coming after him."

"Suspected, rather. As I said, he has enemies, and recently he's made a few more, some by his intentions at Foundry One and others by his failure."

Mal reconsidered. The police chief had wanted them gone before somebody moved against Bien, so _Serenity_ wouldn't be implicated. The man had already made his reservations plain about ship and crew, so he must be doing it for Badger's sake. _One more thing to owe him for. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to give up disliking him._

One of Hoya's men appeared at the forward opening, bowed, and approached his chief. He whispered in Hoya's ear for almost a minute, at the end of which Hoya nodded and spoke in Mandarin. When the subordinate left, Hoya said, "_Peregrine's_ crew just appeared at the cargo hatch and surrendered. No fatalities, but Captain Bien is missing a hand." He drained his cup and pushed his chair back.

Jayne said, "What's gonna happen to him?"

"By your lights, nothing much, I'm afraid. Eavesdown has holding cells, but they're only meant for short terms. Our judicial system is unsanctioned and rudimentary, and geared toward settling rather milder disputes. We could turn him over to the recognized authorities, but I doubt they'd show much interest. The Council will probably confiscate his ship and sell it for scrap, and buy passage offworld for Bien and his men." He rose. "I must leave. Pray don't get up. Thank you all for your hospitality, and good fortune in your travels. Come back to Eavesdown anytime." He gave Mal a strange little smile. "So long as it's not anytime soon."

-0-

Hoya seemed unsuprised to see Shepherd Book waiting on the catwalk. The priest said, "He's still a danger to them. Will this be the end of it, do you think?"

Hoya said, "Normally, I would say not. He's not the type to learn from one lesson, even one as forceful as this one. But, in this case, I'm sure I can convince him. I need only hint who's got their eye on him. No reward would seem worth the risk of their further displeasure, not to a small-timer like Bo Bien. Nice touch, shooting off his hand, by the way. The one holding the microphone, I would guess?"

"I really wouldn't know, Commander."

Hoya raised his eyebrows, but made no comment. He passed by, descended the stairs, and marched out the cargo door.

-0-

With Hoya gone, Inara quit playing hostess. She set the pot in the center of the table and sat in the policeman's former chair. "I think the Chief already knows who did it."

"Don't doubt it," Badger said. "He's been keeping the peace here as long as I been doing business. He knows all the players, and what they're about."

Jayne reached for the pot. "We had mugs instead of these bitty cups, we wouldn't have to keep fillin em."

The Companion's eyelids lowered. "The smaller cups persuade you to taste it instead of swilling it. And sharing the pot builds a feeling of community, Jayne."

The big merc started to return the pot to the center of the table, then changed his mind and offered it to Simon, who sat beside him. "Huh. A Companion trick, like?"

"It's not a trick, just a reminder. We are a community, after all." She looked right at Badger when she said it, Mal noted, and their 'patron' smiled in acknowledgment.

"Well." Badger drained his cup. "I think that's enough time for the Chief to get clear. Thanks for the lovely." He stood and made for the forward hatch. Mal stood as well, and followed him out onto the catwalk.

Badger turned his head, but kept walking. "I can find my own way out, Captain. 'Tsnot like your boat's big enough to get lost in." He stopped and turned. "Or you got something to say?"

Mal swallowed and offered his hand.

Badger stared at it a moment. "Crikey." He reached for it, and they clasped.

Mal said, "Still don't see this turnin into a friendship. But I've found friends in unlikely places before." Still hanging on to the man's hand, he said, "What is it between you and River?"

"Still on that, eh?" But he was smiling. "Nothing so different from what's between you and her, I spect. I just took a shine to her my first trip aboard, is all. She needed a little help, and found a way to get it to her. End of story. Eh, maybe you should let go my hand now, Sarge."

Mal let go and flexed stiff fingers. "The meds."

"Right."

Mal huffed. Simon had been so proud that he'd scored that case of expensive medications for next to nothing; Mal had been, too, thinking they'd cheated the little fixer who'd burned their deal on those food supplements. _You could buy another ship for the real price of them_, Simon had said. "And when she went to your house…"

"To thank me, and offer payment. I accepted a little token of gratitude. Nothing her brother should lose a wink over."

Mal sighed and leaned over the rail, looking down into the hold. "The 'Verse would be a better place on both sides of the Border if the Alliance had left us alone."

"Would never happen. The Core needed the Outer Worlds' raws and foodstuffs, and the people running the Core don't believe in free markets."

"Wish you'd have had a freer hand durin the War, specially at Hera. Things would have gone different."

"No, they wouldna."

Mal turned back. "That so?"

Badger leaned on the rail as well. "Bloke came to me looking for the Tams awhile back. I didn't tell him anything, but he's a persistent sort, so I'm guessing he found you. Meet a man name of Albert Sessions?"

"Our age? Tall, sandy hair, limp?"

"The same. He didn't tell you how he got it."

"Just that it happened during the War."

Badger nodded. "Albert was on our crew, doing the same sort of thing he does now – expediting, you might say. Last job he did for us was a shipment of missiles to Hera, just before the big dustup."

"They never made it to Hera."

"Oh, they did, Sarge." The fixer's eyes were flat, staring out over the hold. "It was the second shipment, actually – the first never made it, ran right into an Alliance cruiser in the middle of nowhere, almost like it was waiting for them. Al saw to the second one personal, he knew we were running out of time. He came with and changed the route after they were on their way, and got to Hera without a sniff o' trouble.

"They put down on a rough field not far from Serenity Valley and offloaded onto a couple trucks was waiting for em. They're just done and ready to roll, when up comes another truck full of men. They were in Independent uniform, but Albert said they looked more like thugs than soldiers. There was an officer with them, a lieutenant, who told him they were there to take charge of the missiles and get them to the launchers.

"Al didn't like the look of them, and they'd shown him no orders. He told the officer that was _his_ job, and he'd see it through. The uniforms could tag along if they wanted, but his boys would be driving the trucks and making the deliveries." Badger turned his head to meet Mal's eyes. "Guess what happened next?"

"Shot him?"

"Too right. The officer. Just drew his sidearm and put one in Al's leg. I don't understand why he didn't blow his brains out instead, and neither does Albert. Maybe to keep the others from thinking they had nothing to lose. But the troops just forced the rest of Al's crew out of the trucks at gunpoint and drove off, leaving him bleeding on the ground. They got him to the ship's infirmary and tried to wave Command, half sure they'd been highjacked by Alliance spies or some such. But they never got put through, just referred in circles till the assault boats landed. Al and his boys spent the rest of the War in Alliance custody, and not as internees. They was interrogated for months, and the questions they got asked told him someone had peached - someone high up, who knew some names but not many details. And, o' course, the missiles just disappeared."

Badger's jaw flexed. "Shouldn't have been hard to find out who sent those jibas, and who was blocking Al's wave to Command. But nobody seemed interested in finding out, even before the War ended. That tells the rest of the story, eh?" He took his hands off the rail. "Well. It's a new day. Other business. Give my regards to the little wraith, next you see her." He headed down the catwalk steps.

-0-

Zoë said, "He down in the hold again?"

Mal said, "Fraid so."

She glared at the open hatch to Jayne's room. "He makes me nervous. Can't you order him to leave it alone?"

"Spose I could. But then I'd have to be extra careful not to catch him at it again." Mal smiled at his mate. "Zoë, he watched em count it when they brought it aboard, and he knows the fellas who come for it'll count it again before they take it off. He just likes lookin at it." He grasped the handle of the ladder down to his room. "Can't say Badger didn't come through for us. Two cargoes in one run. This keeps up, we may be able to afford coffee someday."

She stood at the top of the hatch, looking down at him. "Just not sure we're anybody's smartest choice for an armored-car service."

-0-

Jayne knelt over the open box. It was near big enough to stuff a body in, and it was packed to the top with money. Beautiful, shiny money. He drew his fingertips over the tops of the stacks: platinum, credit coins, even those fancy four-color banknotes, some of them in bigger denominations than he'd known were ever printed. He imagined just plunging his arms in and letting it run through his fingers.

"You sound like Wash and Zoë."

He turned his head to look at River, seated on his weight bench, watching him with a puzzled expression. "Eh?"

She tapped the side of her head. "Here. When they're making love."

"I ain't in love with money," he said, embarrassed. "I just … like it."

She smiled. "Just friends." Her smile disappeared. "You hardly even knew what money was, back on the farm. When did you get so fond of it?"

"When I left home, and found out other folks use it for most everything. And I got even fonder of it when I found out I could buy things I couldn't get no other way."

She lifted an eyebrow.

"Not whores," he said, embarrassed even more. He shut the lid and stood. "Well, not just whores. Big soft beds. Runnin water. Entertainment. Food that wouldn't grow on any farm on Halley. All kinda stuff."

She slid off the bench. "I'm rich, you know." She glanced at the strongbox. "When I'm married, my dowry will make Jimmerson Mining's monthly payroll look like a restaurant tip."

"Yeah, but you gotta marry somebody to get it." He thought about the sort of wedding a girl like River Tam had a right to expect. A white dress with a train the length of the cathedral. A million guests, all her friends and family down to sixth cousins. A cake two stories tall. Gifts that filled rooms. A honeymoon trip that spanned the 'Verse.

A groom who was worlds better than him.

"I really don't think any of that is in my future," she said. At his look, she went on, "Well, if you don't want me to hear it, stop _shouting_ at me." She stepped towards him. "Especially the last part. Is it raining?" She looked up at the ceiling.

His heart sank. "We're in space, Crazy. Ain't no rain in space."

"Maybe a meteor shower, then." She took his hand and tugged him toward his bench. "Exercise. Take your mind off it." She pulled off her boots and stretched her feet, wiggling her toes. "That's what I do, when I can't stop thinking about things. It helps." She started to dance.

_And what if the thing you want most is right in front of you? How do you stop thinking about it then? _He eyed her keenly, but if she read his thought, it didn't show.

Except for that gorram smile.

-0-

Tidying up the upper lounge, Kaylee came across Jayne's treasured stick, the one the settlers on Triumph had given him. She picked it up, and something inside it shifted, hissing like rain on a roof. It was a pleasant sound, and reminded her of rainy days at home. She tipped it once again, listening to it as she trooped up the stairs and into the forward passage. She laid the stick against Jayne's door, where he'd be sure to see it, and wondered why the big merc seemed so fascinated with rain.

-0-

The two men pushed their well-dressed captive into a chair and pulled the bag off his head. The disheveled man blinked in the bright light from the overhead lamp, and tried to peer into the darkness beyond the small pool of illumination. "What the devil is this about?"

From the darkness beyond, a voice replied in Mandarin, "I think you know, Mr. Deschamps. You owe a debt, and we have been sent to collect."

The seated man switched to Mandarin as well. "I've lost everything, all I had." His voice rose. "I was cheated, lied to. If you think you're owed something, get it from them. They have all my money now, I'm sure of it."

"Perhaps you were misled, Mr. Deschamps, but it is difficult to cheat an honest man. You knew that you were dabbling in … commercial ventures that were part of someone else's satrapy. Your greed made it easy to convince you that you could get away with it. You thought your wealth and family connections would shield you even if you were caught." The man in the shadows moved closer, but not quite close enough to be revealed. "All your life, you've believed you could get away with anything."

Deschamps swallowed. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"My employers want to see you tied in a weighted sack and thrown in the river," the man said. "But they give me a certain amount of discretion in such matters. For a price, I could be persuaded to impose a lighter sentence."

"But I don't _have_ anything else!"

"Pity." The two men standing on either side grasped his arms.

"Wait!" Deschamps went on, "I… I have an account. It's not much. But it's all I have left."

"How much?"

"About six thousand, I think. I haven't looked at it in a long time. it's not really mine, I'm just the trustee…"

"Family money?"

"Yes, a niece, a minor. It's supposed to be hers in three years."

"Six thousand." The voice was silent. "That will do. In fact, I believe it is precisely the sum required." One of the guards stepped into the darkness for a moment and returned with a handheld Cortex link. "Close the account and transfer the credit. My man has the necessary information on the target account. Do this, and you'll leave here a free man."

Shakily, the man accepted the link and began typing instructions. He pressed his thumb to the screen to complete the authorization, and passed it back to the guard, who made an entry and then tossed the unit into the darkness toward the unseen leader. "Once this gets out, I'll be truly ruined. I'll be shunned, outcast."

"Three years, you said? By that time I doubt it will matter to you."

The Cortex link chimed, a completion signal. Suddenly the two men seized Deschamps's arms, pinning them to the chair's. The owner of the voice emerged from the darkness finally: a short man with thinning dark hair, dressed in a conservative business suit. One of the men holding Deschamps said in English, "Are you sure? One of us could do it."

"No, mate," the man said in a pronounced Titan accent. "It's got to be me." From his jacket pocket, he produced a syringe.

Deschamps stared at the approaching needle. "You said you wouldn't kill me."

"So I did." The guards were gripping Deschamps's arms hard enough to make the blood vessels stand out. The leader selected one and stuck the needle in. "You ever hear of slam? It's a specialty item, not too easy to find. It's a special sort of drops. The buzz is the same, but it's even more addictive. One dose of this, it's like you've been on drops for a month." He pressed the plunger home just as the man began to struggle. The struggles ceased immediately.

"Ohhh," Deschamps murmured, his pupils opening to hide the color of his irises. "That's…"

"All better now?" Badger nodded to his men, and they let Deschamps go. "Off you go, then. Enjoy it while it lasts."

Deschamps rose, swaying. He looked at Badger with a mildly puzzled expression, and then wobbled towards the door.

-0-

Darcy, sitting in the dark in a rather more comfortable chair than the one under the light, pressed her fists to her mouth and tried to hold down her last meal. She'd accompanied Badger to this warehouse and ordered to sit quietly. When the man had been led in and unmasked, Bertram's eyes had been on her. He must have seen what he'd been looking for in her face, because he'd nodded and begun to talk to the prisoner. She'd felt her shock and horror increase as the parley went on, and she realized what was happening. But when Bertram had produced the syringe and put it in the man's arm, her horror had turned inward, at her own hunger. She'd stared at that syringe, marking every drop, and pitied and envied its recipient at the same time. His moan of pleasure had made her shiver with desire. _I'll never really be free._

"Rough?" Bertram stood looking down at her.

"Yes." She shivered again, and said unsteadily, "Bertram. You didn't have to do this for me, truly."

"No. Not for me either." He took a knee in front of her and took her clenched hands in his. In a low voice, he said, "Bernard knows it was him. He told me. That's why I've got to ruin this gan ni niang, wreck him, push him off the edge of the world and out of sight before your husband gets out. Else Bernard won't go a fortnight before he's back in custody. That being the case, sooner it's done the better, so maybe by the time he walks free, he'll have forgot Niles Deschamps ever existed." He gave her hands a little squeeze. "Both of you, praps." He stood and reached into the waist pocket of his jacket. "Here. Been looking for a proper time to give you this. Now I'm thinking I waited too long already."

Darcy stared at the tiny jeweler's box in Bertram's palm, while half a dozen thoughts clashed in her head. Gifts of jewelry were governed by strict customs on most Core Worlds, and among the gentry of Persephone as well. A woman of breeding would never accept a gift of jewelry from a man not closely related to her, and one intended to be worn against the skin was the exclusive prerogative of a husband or lover. The box was too small to contain a relatively impersonal gift like a brooch or hatpin. A ring, even one not for a piercing, would be considered a scandalously intimate present to accept from a brother-in law. But a slave dare not refuse her master anything.

"Take it," he said, in a voice that allowed no protest or argument. "Man's got every right to dress up his favorite little slave girl, don't he?"

She took it gingerly from his hands.

"Open it."

Holding her breath, she lifted the lid. She beheld the contents and gave a little gasp. She clutched the box in both hands. "Where did you _find_ them?"

"Right where you pawned em. Had a bit o' luck there. Dear Uncle thought telling every prospect their history might make them worth more. Guess he didn't think it through."

"Too right," she said, unconsciously adopting one of Badger's expressions. She stared down at her wedding rings. _What suitor, even one who'd buy a wedding band from a pawnshop, would want to touch this one? Knowing the last man to slip it on a girl's finger was in prison, and the girl cast out of her family? _She closed the box gently, intending to put it somewhere safe. Instead, she found her hands lifting the box to press it against her heart. "Bertram, there … I don't have any words."

A smile touched the corner of his mouth. "You, stuck for something to say? That makes them worth every penny."

Unsmiling, she said in a very low voice, "If we were alone, I wouldn't need words to tell you how I feel."

After a short silence, he cleared his throat. "Well, then. Aren't you going to put them on?"

"When Bernard is released, I'll meet him at the gate with them. If he'll put them back on my finger, I'll never take them off again." _And until then, I'm yours to command. And for the asking._

He nodded, smiling. "You'll do. Seems he picked the right girl after all."


End file.
